«The Magician» by W. S. Maugham (1500,00 руб.)

Д 19 “The Magician” by W.S. Maugham [Электронный ресурс] : учеб. пособие по домашнему чтению / О. <...> Then I returned to London and, with a friend of my own age, took and furnished a small flat near Victoria Station. <...> My friend was at the Bar, and so I had the day (and the flat) to myself and my work. <...> I was looked upon as a promising young writer and, I think I may say it without vanity, was accepted as a member of the intelligentsia, an honourable condition which, some years later, when I became a popular writer of light comedies, I lost; and have never since regained. <...> It was all very nice, but I couldn't see that it was leading me anywhere. <...> I told the friend with whom I shared the flat that I wanted to be rid of it and go abroad. <...> A few months before this, I had been fortunate enough to make friends with a young painter who had a studio in the Rue Campagne Premiиre. <...> He had had an upbringing unusual for a painter, for he had been to Eton* and to Cambridge*. <...> I bought, secondhand, such furniture and household utensils as were essential, and the concierge told me of a woman who would come in for half a day and make my cafй au lait* in the morning and my luncheon at noon. <...> I have described the place elsewhere, and in some detail in the novel to which these pages are meant to serve as a preface, so that I need not here say more about it. <...> We were apt to look upon them as interlopers, and I don't think we made them particularly welcome. <...> One of these casual visitors was Aleister Crowley. <...> He had fine eyes and a way, whether natural or acquired I do not know, of so focusing them that, when he looked at you, he seemed to look behind you. <...> He was a liar and unbecomingly boastful, but the odd thing was that he had actually done some of the things he boasted of. <...> As you flip through the pages you may well read a stanza which, if you came across it in a volume of Swinburne's <...>