Free Aurora Dawn by Herman Wouk Page A

probably ate peanuts with simple gusto.”
    “Laura, you’re making Mike very happy,” said English. “Shocking people is his one delight, aside from hearing his own voice.
     He will pose as anything to achieve surprise–this Savonarola vein is a new thing which he seems to have cooked up just for
     you. Actually, he’s a good fellow.”
    “I am not,” said Wilde. I am a still, small voice and a devouring fire, and my vision will one day be everyone’s, but meanwhile
     I must suffer scorn like all true Evangelists. Next time we dine, young lady, I shall, for your especial benefit, devour a
     plate of locusts and wild honey. Perhaps then you will take me seriously.”
    Laura burst out laughing. English joined. Wilde’s face remained impassive.
    “Mike, you’re splendid,” said English. “For all your wind, you have just donated a gift worth many thousands of dollars to
     the Chest, not to mention the immense value it will have in the campaign, and all you’re trying to do is cover up your generosity.”
    “All you’re trying to do is seduce this poor girl,” said Wilde. “I am pleased to observe enough force of character in her
     to resist you successfully.”
    “That charge, Mike, is plausible enough to be dignified with a denial. Laura, I assure you I have no such deplorable intention,”
     said English, turning toward her.
    “Matters stand much worse than I thought, then,” said Wilde. “You are thinking of prisoning this child in the echoing golden
     dungeon of your wealth by marrying her. I am not at all sure she has the strength to resist that.”
    “Hello, Honey,” said a new voice. The three diners glanced up. Andrew Reale was standing beside their table.
    If the reader has been enduring Michael Wilde’s nonsensical farragoes with half the impatience with which the author has been
     forced to set them down, he may wish to abandon the book now. I think it only fair to warn the audience that this harlequin
     is one of the key figures in the pantomime. It is regrettable, because he is capable of taking up an entire chapter with a
     speech (he does so, in fact, in Chapter 13); and were this anything but a true tale, I would surely remove him with surgical
     dispatch. As it happened, however, it was unquestionably Michael Wilde who started the great Aurora Dawn scand … but it is
     poor storytelling to anticipate.
    Andrew, then, fresh from sleep in a luxurious Pullman compartment, glowing with the secret of his triumph at the Old House,
     had just arrived at Le Boeuf Gras to take a fortifying lunch before his appointed interview with Talmadge Marquis, a prospect
     at which men usually quaked. The fact that he was the bearer of good news reassured him only slightly, for it was known that
     the most pleasant conversation with Marquis could take a turn that would suddenly break a man’s career and leave his children
     without bread. It was no great coincidence that brought Andy to the very eating place in which his sweetheart was dining with
     a millionaire and a well-known painter, for despite the number of restaurants in New York, there are only a half dozen at
     which a certain segment of the population will ever manifest itself, and, in the neighborhood of East Fifty-second Street,
     Le Boeuf Gras is as much the place to go to as, say, Mahomet’s tomb is in Mecca.
    Honey introduced her fiancé to her companions, and he cheerfully accepted their prompt invitation that he join them at table.
     It was no new thing for him to find his sweetheart dining with strange and attractive gentlemen, for he was aware of the obligations
     of her profession. He trusted her utterly, with the careless confidence of a young man who has been permitted by a young lady
     to find out that she adores him. This reaction, predictable as the tendency of a man to stand with his back to a fire, is
     discerned by some young ladies early in life, and cynics say that occasionally they even use it to advantage, but this pen