novelYou Know What I Mean
| ← Ch.084 | Ch.086 → |
There was a hole at the top of the bamboo dwelling.
Air was leaking in with a whooshing sound.
Shen Qingqiu lay on his back. Luo Binghe pressed down on him, licking and kissing along his neck like a puppy as he made his way down. Shen Qingqiu stared at the big hole that one of the "Luo Binghe" had blasted out earlier during the duel. He could no longer continue to pretend that it was invisible and spoke out "...... Why don't we move elsewhere?"
Luo Binghe looked up and willfully replied, "I don't want to."
Going down the mountain to book a room would be way better than doing it here!
Before Shen Qingqiu could speak, Luo Binghe added, "We are staying. Right here. In the bamboo house."
He was firm in his statement. Perhaps the bamboo dwelling really was a special place to him.
Before Shen Qingqiu could speak, Luo Binghe added, "We are staying. Right here. In the bamboo house."
He was firm in his statement. Perhaps the bamboo dwelling really was a special place to him.
Shen Qingqiu's face was full of black lines."Don't push your luck." After having said so, he turned back as he grumbled in his mind:
What a finicky child!
He had never really meant to wound Luo Binghe intentionally, but it was also the truth that he had hurt him over and over again.
. Outside the dwelling, Ming Fan said, "Eh, why do I feel like something is missing at the top of the bamboo abode? Is there a hole?"
"You're right, Dashixiong, it seems like there really is a hole."
"Since when did that appear? Should we go to An Ding Peak now and let them know so they can come and fix it without delay?"
Shen Qingqiu was afraid that they would actually come in or send someone in. He exerted force in his fingers and dug them into Luo Binghe's back. His entrance contracted, making it harder for Luo Binghe to thrust it in.
Ning Yingying apparently stamped her foot as she lost her temper, "Fix what? We ran for so long, we are all tired to death. If you want to fix it, do it tomorrow!"
The crowd of disciples hastily said, "Alright, alright, we'll listen to Shimei."
"We'll fix it tomorrow since Shimei said so."
Ning Yingying added, "Besides, Shizun doesn't even like letting outsiders enter or clean the side room where Ah Luo lives. He would definitely be unhappy if we move or touch anything again without authorization. Didn't you guys learned your lesson?!"
Luo Binghe muttered, "Shizun."
Shen Qingqiu could not help saying, "Don't...... call me!"
Shen Qingqiu's shame shot through the ceiling when Luo Binghe solemnly addressed him with all the respect due to a disciple's master at this very moment in time. He could not shoulder this shame this no matter how thick-skinned he was. But Luo Binghe suddenly whispered in his ear, "Shizun, I couldn't find you over there."
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as usual, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-colored blossoms of the laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters who, in an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the black-crocketed spires of the early June hollyhocks, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive, and the dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
In the centre of the room, clamped to an upright easel, stood the full-length portrait of a young man of extraordinary personal beauty, and in front of it, some little distance away, was sitting the artist himself, Basil Hallward, whose sudden disappearance some years ago caused, at the time, such public excitement, and gave rise to so many strange conjectures.
As he looked at the gracious and comely form he had so skilfully mirrored in his art, a smile of pleasure passed across his face, and seemed about to linger there. But he suddenly started up, and, closing his eyes, placed his fingers upon the lids, as though he sought to imprison within his brain some curious dream from which he feared he might awake.
"It is your best work, Basil, the best thing you have ever done, " said Lord Henry, languidly."You must certainly send it next year to the Grosvenor. The Academy is too large and too vulgar. The Grosvenor is the only place."
"I don't think I will send it anywhere, " he answered, tossing his head back in that odd way that used to make his friends laugh at him at Oxford."No: I won't send it anywhere."
Lord Henry elevated his eyebrows, and looked at him in amazement through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that curled up in such fanciful whorls from his heavy opium-tainted cigarette."Not send it anywhere? My dear fellow, why? Have you any reason? What odd chaps you painters are! You do anything in the world to gain a reputation. As soon as you have one, you seem to want to throw it away. It is silly of you, for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. A portrait like this would set you far above all the young men in England, and make the old men quite jealous, if old men are ever capable of any emotion."
"I know you will laugh at me, " he replied, "but I really can't exhibit it. I have put too much of myself into it."
Lord Henry stretched his long legs out on the divan and shook with laughter.
"Yes, I knew you would laugh; but it is quite true, all the same."
"Too much of yourself in it! Upon my word, Basil, I didn't know you were so vain; and I really can't see any resemblance between you, with your rugged strong face and your coal-black hair, and this young Adonis, who looks as if he was made of ivory and rose-leaves. Why, my dear Basil, he is a Narcissus, and you-well, of course you have an intellectual expression, and all that. But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself an exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don't think.
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