Excerpt from Quiet InteriorClaire went slowly upstairs, pulling off her reindeer gloves. As her head came level with the landing window, which looked out on to the paved court of a club, she saw the fine black tracery of lea¿ess plane trees against the blue October Sky. There was some magic for her in lea¿ess boughs: she loved their austerity, the rhythm of their lines, unblurred by bursting, sticky buds, pricked vernal leaves, thick drooping foliage, tassels, streaks or cones of bloom. She loved etchings, the sharp silhouette of crags and masonry, rain frozen in hard ruts dew on dark thorns, frost pencillings on the pane, the pale tints and thin lines of a wintry country-side. But this taste for severity and pallor was no indication of ascetic ism, it was as sensuous and aesthetic as another's love for deep banks of ¿owers, luxurious fabrics. One stand ing before an espalier crucified upon the wall, would rejoice if an apricot, sunned through to the core, dropped into his hand, and Claire's pleasure in the pattern of the espalier and its slender leaves would be no less.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.