Explore "The Flaw in the Crystal" by May Sinclair on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
How could it? There was nothing behind it. All Milly's plans had been / like that; they fell to dust; they _were_ dust. They had been always / that pitiful, desperate stirring of the dust to hide the terror, the / futile throwing of the dust in the poor thing's eyes. As if he couldn't / see through it. As if, with the supernatural lucidity, the invincible / cunning of the insane, he didn't see through anything and provide for / it. It was really only his indestructible urbanity, persisting through / the wreck of him, that bore, tolerantly, temperately, with Milly and her / plans. Without it he might be dangerous. With it, as long as it lasted, / little Milly, plan as she would, was safe.
But they couldn't count on its lasting. Agatha had realised that from / the moment when she had seen him draw down the blind again after his / wife had drawn it up. That was the maddest thing he had done yet. She / had shuddered at it as at an act of violence. It outraged, cruelly, his / exquisite quality. It was so unlike him.