The White Virgin

It was a long, thin, white finger, one which had felt the throbbing of hundreds and thousands of pulses, and Doctor Praed, after viciously flicking at a fly which tried persistently to settle upon his ivory-white, shiny, bald head, hooked that finger into Clive Reed's button-hole, just below the white rosebud Janet had given him a little earlier in the evening. "Mind the flower." "All right, puppy. Come here. I want to talk to you." "About Janet?"