OCR Text |
Show •163 room: shelves full of bits and pieces of stone and scraps of metal, hammers, chisels, wooden mallets, files and saws- they reminded me of the young Adam in the forest, gripping his shovel, determined that he would be somebody special. God but it was all so sad. I looked at Jacob still sprawled in the chair and thought how much easier it seemed to be for him. He saw me looking and shook his head. "Don't take it so seriously," he said. "I have to." And that was true. "Where did Morgan go?" "She told me she was going up to take a nap until dinner was ready." "Do you ever have trouble with Kathleen?" I said. "What sort of trouble?" "Does she ever make you wish you'd never met her?" "Would you like my advice?" Jacob said. "All right." He sat up slowly. His face was tired; wide wrinkles crowded the forehead; the same deep grooves of sadness that Adam had carved in the centaur's face he had also, by a remoter process, chiselled in Jacob's. "It's not really advice," he said. "I don't know what you should do. But what I've learned is that between men and women it's a war. Anybody who really knows them will tell you the same. There can be mutual respect, good times and even affection, but your pure romantic love is an invention not even of the |