United States or Laos ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Then he had wandered desultorily about the city, wherever chance directed his footsteps, and by midday had satisfied himself that the Commune was master of Paris, without even the necessity of striking a blow, for Thiers and the ministers had decamped from their quarters in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the entire government was flying in disorder to Versailles, the thirty thousand troops had been hastily conducted from the city, leaving more than five thousand deserters from their numbers along the line of their retreat.
He went desultorily to the window, the blind of which had not been pulled down, and looked out at the thin, fast-sinking moon, and at the tall stalk of smoke rising from the top of Suke Damson's chimney, signifying that the young woman had just lit her fire to prepare supper. He became conscious of a discussion in progress on the opposite side of the court.
Everything in which he sought to find distraction, lacked savour. As he sat watching a ballet that glittered with electricity, and was one twinkle of coloured movement, he found himself longing for the silence, the gloom, the live expectation of the tentroom, night, and Julian. At White's the conversation of the men struck him as even more scrappy, more desultorily scandalous, than usual.
Karen was still, touchingly so to her husband's eyes, the little Hans Andersen heroine in appearance. She wore to-night the white silk dress and the wreath of little white roses. Oliver and Gregory chatted desultorily until the Byngs arrived. Oliver was fair and ruddy and his air of dozing contentment was always vexatious to his younger brother. He had every reason for contentment.
Down in the flat where the bushes grew sparsely along the tiny arroyo now gone dry, the herd had stopped from sheer exhaustion, and were already nibbling desultorily upon the tenderest twigs. This was what Luck wanted in his scene, though the cattle must be moved into the location he had chosen where was just the background effect he wanted to get, with the bare mesa showing in the far distance.
Of late years the claims on her resources from the family across the Atlantic had a good deal clipped her wings, and, though she made a round of spring and of autumn visits, she spent her time for the most part in her little Surrey house, engaged desultorily in gardening, study, and the entertainment of the friend or two always with her.
I had been twice to the coach office, and was making my way desultorily back to Ramon's. He was talking to the editor of the Buckatoro Journal the man from next door and to another who had, whilst I walked lazily across the blazing square, ridden furiously up to the steps of the arcade. The rider was talking to both of them with exaggerated gestures of his arms.
First it was the face of madame as he had seen it, now here, now there, in sunshine, in cloud. Was hers a heart of ice which the warmth of love could not melt? Did she love another? Would he ever see her again? Spain! Ah, but for the Chevalier he might be riding at her side over the Pyrenees. The pen moved desultorily. Line after line was written, only to be rejected. The envoi first took shape.
He saw her drifting desultorily under the high hedge, advancing towards him slowly. He did not move, he did not look again. He was as if asleep, at peace, slumbering and utterly relaxed. She came up and stood before him, hanging her head. 'See what a flower I found you, she said, wistfully holding a piece of purple-red bell-heather under his face.
That was all, but it gave me food for thought, and a suspicion which Saturday confirmed in a sufficiently startling way. On that Saturday I was at luncheon in the First Avenue Hotel in Holborn, when a man came in Tendring by name whom I knew quite well. We exchanged greetings and sat at our luncheon, talking desultorily. A clerk from his office brought in a telegram for Tendring.
Word Of The Day