Excerpt from The Blindness of Virtue A milkman's white horse is munching while he can, fowls hunt busily for succulent morsels and a string of geese wander aimlessly about. The front door of the house is open. A rather worn oak chair can just be seen and a corner of a very elderly Turkish rug. There drifts into the garden the sound of someone, - almost obviously a girl, and a temperamental girl, practising on the piano, now irritably, now languidly, and always with an underlying sense of thinking of something better. There is no one in the garden except a little quaint figure, in a home-made black frock, higher in front than behind, and a large apron, ironed and starched too stiffly. On her whispy hair is stuck a whimsical cap that is altogether incapable of sitting straight. This is Cookie, who, with a touch of bravado, is picking sweet peas. Through the gates comes a wiry middle-aged man with the moustache of one who drinks as often as luck wills it and tight fitting trousers, cleverly patched. He has a three days growth of beard upon his chin and a quick, cunning, but not unhumorous, eye. His bare brown arms are closely tattooed. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.