“I don’t see what you mean,” said Henrietta, distracted— in fact in a quite new kind of pain. She saw only too well that this inquisition had no bearing on [her] at all, that Leopold was not even interested in hurting, and was only tweaking her petals off or her wings off with the intention of exploring himself. His dispassionateness was more dire to Henrietta than cruelty. With no banal reassuring grown-ups present, with grown-up intervention taken away, there is no limit to the terror strange children feel of each other, a terror life obscures but never ceases to justify.
— from The House in Paris, by Elizabeth Bowen
Those chosen childish children with whom he played made a crook of him, and all the time he impressed them he despised them for being impressed; he wanted to crack the world by saying some final and frightful thing.”
— from The House in Paris, by Elizabeth Bowen
e daggar art: THE MUSEUM 