Michael Malone - Weebly

acquet. "See you tonight at your place. Tell you what.
We'll pretend we're married!" Laughing, he watched
her scuffle away through the smooth white gravel. Her
hair looked like clusters of wild blackberries. He was
only thirty-two. He could wait forever.
A deathly presentiment had seized Priscilla
Hancock Ransom and had grown, like a tumor,
throughout the week, until now she felt the pain
everywhere and unremittingly. Her life had slid away
from her into the abyss. She had reached la fin des
bons vieux temps.
Accustomed since a precocious childhood to
regard herself as a patrician of modernity, she felt today
stripped of her titles and ignominiously drummed from
her station. Anonymous letters, her daughter, magazines
—all accused her of superannuation. She, belle of the
beau monde of Dingley Falls's bon ton, was no more
than a parvenu as a modern woman. What she thought
risque was passé, her chicness was senectitude. She
couldn't even masturbate, and even that shameful failure
had been witnessed by God knows who.