Free A Most Extraordinary Pursuit by Juliana Gray

easy to be his friend as not, and our life on this earth is too short and uncertain not to take friendship when it’s offered.”
    â€œHe hasn’t offered me his friendship, not as such. I was thrust upon him, or he upon me. Either way, he’s hardly the sort of man a decent woman should want as a friend. He speaks too freely, lives too freely—”
    â€œMy dear Emmeline. When did you become such a rigid moral character?”
    When I describe my father’s actions and expressions, I must emphasize that I never actually looked at his face, not directly. Not that I was afraid of the illusion itself, which I knew could not harm me; I think, instead, I was afraid that it might disappear if I turned to address him face-to-face, and in those days, even an illusion of my father—a
hallucination
, as I believe the scientists call them—was better than no father at all. My impressions of him inhabited the periphery of my vision, not quite distinct, and relied as much upon memory and instinct as sight itself. You might say that the illusion itself was an illusion.
    I said, into my papers, “You were the one who taught me to do what is right, Papa.”
    He didn’t answer, and when I stole another sidelong glance at the chair beneath the porthole, he had vanished, leaving me alone to wonder what I had donewrong.

 
    There were four young women and three young men on the dais in the center of the hall, and all were dazzling to the eye, richly clothed and anointed in oil, but the Hero shone out amongst them all. He stood as tall as a warhorse, bearing the shoulders of a great ox, and his fair hair was lustrous in the glow of the torches. He refused the wine that the Lady placed before him, and ate only meat and vegetables and water, and when he spoke the men around him grew quiet, for he had the voice of a king.
    The Lady knew that concubines were sent to the tributes’ chambers in the evening for the pleasure of the male youths, so when the feast concluded she donned the veils of the slave women and knocked upon the door that belonged to the Hero . . .
    T
HE
B
OOK OF
T
IME
,
A. M. H AYWOOD (1921)

Five

    T he main saloon of the
Isolde
took up the entire width of the ship along a fifty-foot section of her main and upper decks, topped by a brilliant stained glass dome that was presently crackling with rain, though not loudly enough to drown out the voice of Caruso from the gramophone inhabiting a substantial cabinet on the port side.
    â€œWhat the devil’s that?” said Lord Silverton, pausing in the doorway.
    â€œIt is Donizetti.”
    â€œDamned mournful bloke. Haven’t we got anything a bit more cheerful?
Pirates of Penzance
, now that’s a jolly farce. Or else—whatsit—that charming little jig a year or two back—
Merrie England.
Marvelous stuff.”
    I rose to a sitting position. “No.”
    Silverton strolled to the gramophone and propped his long body against the cabinet. “Still a bit green about the gills, are we?”
    â€œTouch that needle at your peril, sir.”
    He held up his hands and waited politely for the end of the aria, at which point he raised the arm of the gramophone with a single finger and set it aside, in the same manner he might dispose of a soiled napkin. “Just how the devil do you know what he’s caterwauling about? Or does it matter?”
    â€œOf course it matters. Nemorino has joined the army, and he’s just seen a tear roll down the cheek of the girl he has always hopelessly loved, so perhaps she cares for him, too, except now it’s too late—”
    â€œOh, I see. The same sentimental rubbish as you get in the music hall, except it’s all right because it’s sung in Italian.”
    I folded my arms. “Have you come for any particular purpose, or only to malign a form of art of which you are entirely ignorant?”
    â€œActually, I thought we might have a