Endless Night / Бесконечная ночь. Книга для чтения на английском языке. Агата Кристи

      ‘Yes. When I was in the South of France. He was in a sanatorium there.’

      ‘Every minute, Ellie, you seem to be more and more amazing. The things you do and manage.’

      ‘He’s rather a wonderful person I think,’ said Ellie, ‘but rather frightening.’

      ‘Did he frighten you?’

      ‘Yes, he frightened me very much for some reason.’

      ‘Did you talk to him about us?’

      ‘Yes. Oh yes, I told him all about us and about Gipsy’s Acre and about the house. He told me then that we’d have to take a chance with him. He’s a very ill man. He said he thought he still had the life left in him to go and see the site, to draw the plans, to visualize it and get it all sketched out. He said he wouldn’t mind really if he died before the house was finished, but I told him,’ added Ellie, ‘that he mustn’t die before the house was finished because I wanted him to see us live in it.’

      ‘What did he say to that?’

      ‘He asked me if I knew what I was doing marrying you, and I said of course I did.’

      ‘And then?’

      ‘He said he wondered if you knew what you were doing.’ ‘I know all right,’ I said.

      ‘He said “You will always know where you’re going, Miss Guteman.” He said “You’ll be going always where you want to go and because it’s your chosen way.”

      ‘“But Mike,” he said, “might take the wrong road. He hasn’t grown up enough yet to know where he’s going.”

      ‘I said,’ said Ellie, ‘“He’ll be quite safe with me.”’

      She had superb self-confidence. I was angry though at what Santonix had said. He was like my mother. She always seemed to know more about me than I knew myself.

      ‘I know where I’m going,’ I said. ‘I’m going the way I want to go and we’re going it together.’