The streets, the town faded. She thought:
"Whatever happens, I cannot withstand that face." She was feverishly
happy, and at the same time ravaged by both pain and fear. She became
a fatalist. And she abandoned the pretence that she was not the slave
of that face. Her eyes grew candidly acquiescent, as if she were
murmuring to him, "I am defenceless against you."
III
It was not surprising that Rachel, who never in her life had beheld
at close quarters any of the phenomena of luxury, should blink her
ingenuous eyes at the blinding splendour of the antechambers of the
Imperial Cinema de Luxe. Eyes less ingenuous than hers had blinked
before that prodigious dazzlement. Even Louis, a man of vast
experience and sublime imperturbability, visiting the Imperial on its
opening night, had allowed the significant words to escape him, "Well,
I'm blest!"--proof enough of the triumph of the Imperial!
The Imperial had set out to be the most gorgeous cinema in the Five
Towns; and it simply was. Its advertisements read: "There is always
room at the top." There was. Over the ceiling of its foyer enormous
crimson peonies expanded like tropic blooms, and the heart of each
peony was a sixteen-candle-power electric lamp.
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