China oil paintings

China oil paintings
Archer sat down on the bench and continued to gaze at the awninged balcony. He calculated the time it would take his son to be carried up in the lift to the fifth floor, to ring the bell, and be admitted to the hall, and then ushered into the drawing-room. He pictured Dallas entering that room with his quick assured step and his delightful smile, and wondered if the people were right who said that his boy ``took after him.''
Then he tried to see the persons already in the room -- for probably at that sociable hour there would be more than one -- and among them a dark lady, pale and dark, who would look up quickly, half rise, and hold out a long thin hand with three rings on it. . . . He
-361-thought she would be sitting in a sofa-corner near the fire, with azaleas banked behind her on a table.
``It's more real to me here than if I went up,'' he suddenly heard himself say; and the fear lest that last shadow of reality should lose its edge kept him rooted to his seat as the minutes succeeded each other.