United States or Iran ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Lessingham sipped her tea in silence. Cecily moved about and presently brought a book to her chair by the tea-table. "No doubt you had the advantage of hearing Mr. Elgar's projects detailed," said her aunt, with irony which presumed a complete understanding between them. "No." Cecily shook her head and smiled. "Curious how closely he and Mr. Marsh resemble each other at times." "Do you think so?"
Chepstow's sitting-room at the Savoy was decorated with pink and green in pale hues which suited well her present scheme of colour. In it there was a little rosewood piano. Upon that piano's music-desk, on the following day, stood a copy of Elgar's "Dream of Gerontius," open at the following words: "Proficiscere, anima Christiana, de hoc mundo! Go forth upon thy journey, Christian soul!
Marsh had withdrawn from colloquy with the Germans, and kept glancing across the table at his compatriots, obviously wishing that he might join them. Mallard, upon whom Elgar's excited talk jarred more and more, noticed the stranger's looks, and at length leaned forward to speak to him. "As usual, we are in a minority among the sun-worshippers." "Sun-worshippers! Good!" laughed the other.
But upon the eyelashes there presently shone a tear; it swelled, broke away, and left a track of moisture. Poor white face, with the dark hair softly shadowing its temples! Poor troubled brain, wearying itself in idle questioning of powers that heeded not! Elgar's marriage had been a great success.
At the first glance he was surprised by a handwriting which was not Elgar's; recollecting himself, he knew it for that of Mrs. Lessingham. "It grieves me to be obliged to send you disquieting news so soon after your departure from Naples, but I think you will agree with me that I have no choice but to write of something that has this morning come to my knowledge.
His intellect was combative, and no subject excited it to such activity as this of Hebraic constraint in the modern world. Elgar's book, supposing him to have been capable of writing it, would have resembled no other; it would have been, as he justly said, unique in its anti-dogmatic passion.
The lamp was extinguished "Yes, it is," answered Elgar's voice in the darkness. "I don't like the course things have been taking." "Then you were quite right to speak plainly. Be at rest; you shall have no more anxiety." She opened the door, and they went upstairs together.
"Of one thing I am quite sure, that I wish I were a male Miss Fleet. She knows what few people know." "What is that?" "What is small and what is great." "And you found that out in five minutes at a concert?" "Elgar's is music that helps the perceptions." Mrs. Mansfield's perceptions were very keen. Yet she was puzzled by Heath.
Mallard, grimly accepting the help of wine against his inner foes, at length earned Elgar's approval; he had relaxed indeed, and was no longer under the oppression of English fog. But with him such moods were of brief duration; he suddenly quitted the table, and went out into the night air. The late moon was rising, amber-coloured on a sky of dusky azure.
He thought of his first visit to her, the open piano, "Proficiscere, anima Christiana," "The Scarlet Letter," and her quotation. What had she been thinking while she played Elgar's curiously unearthly music, while she read Hawthorne's pitiful book? She had been using art, no doubt, as so many use it, as a means of escape from life.
Word Of The Day