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Again Clarissa overslept herself, and on waking found the sun already high in the heavens; again she called to Blanchefleur to make ready while she filled her golden bowl with water at the spring, and again Blanchefleur, half-waking and half-dreaming, replied, 'I come, and came not, but fell back in slumber, so that Clarissa on hasting to their Lord found no Blanchefleur there.
Huldbrand, however, persuaded himself that the priest was full of whims and fancies, and with dawn of day he sent for a father from the nearest monastery, who, without hesitation, promised to perform the ceremony in a few days. It was between night and dawn of day that the knight was lying on his couch, half-waking, half-sleeping.
If living were but the gratification of sensuous indolence, if existence were but luxurious dozing and half-waking, then the palace of the Ptolemies were indeed an Elysium, with its soft-footed, silent, swift, intelligent Oriental servants; rooms where the eye grew weary of rare sculpture or fresco; books drawn from the greatest library in the world the Museum close at hand; a broad view of the blue Mediterranean, ever changing and ever the same, and of the swarming harbour and the bustling city; and gardens upon gardens shut off from the outside by lofty walls some great enclosures containing besides forests of rare trees a vast menagerie of wild beasts, whose roarings from their cages made one think the groves a tropical jungle; some gardens, dainty, secluded spots laid out in Egyptian fashion, under the shade of a few fine old sycamores, with a vineyard and a stone trellis-work in the midst, with arbours and little parks of exotic plants, a palm or two, and a tank where the half-tame water-fowl would plash among the lotus and papyrus plants.
Her face was clear to me, there in the dark. It grew malicious; then it hardened into wickedness, and I slipped from watching into a drowsy, half-waking sleep in my chair. The red bar of light became the flame of cannon on a battlefield, I saw our men in a life-and-death struggle with the enemy on a rough, wild mountainside.
The final grain that had turned the balance, it appears, was a half-waking morning dream, or almost ocular vision he had of his glorious cousin Olaf Tryggveson, who severely admonished, exhorted, and encouraged him; and disappeared grandly, just in the instant of Olaf's awakening; so that Olaf almost fancied he had seen the very figure of him, as it melted into air.
Nina was out in a little boat alone, and the waves dashed the tiny craft nearer and nearer to the cave where the cuttlefish were waiting; finally she came so close that one tentacle seized her. Terrified, she awoke. After hours of half-waking, half-sleeping, formless confusion, she dreamed again. In this dream she and Giovanni were on horseback.
His stateroom was well aft, and in his drowsy, half-waking moments, he was conscious that the sea was running heavily. He remembered that the wind had been east all day, and that he had seen the danger-signal floating that afternoon. Toward morning he grew more wakeful. The whistling of the fog-signal, which had now become almost constant, vanquished at length his inclination toward slumber.
He was drowsy, and his brain stopped thinking logically and slipped into half-waking fancy. The Joshua seemed to move, to lift its arm and point more imperatively toward the peak. Its ungainly head seemed to turn and nod at Casey. What did the darned thing want? Casey would go when he, got good and ready. Perhaps he would go that way, and perhaps he would not.
Many sad and desponding thoughts forced themselves upon her, as she lay, hour after hour, in a state of half-waking consciousness. It was nearly day-dawn, when, from all this, she found relief in a deep slumber. The next day was one of heart-aching reflections to Theodore Wilmer.
So far he had been in that half-waking state when things produce a confused and almost monstrous impression, but suddenly his wits were startled into quickness. Among several voices that seemed to talk with Jomar, his ear all at once caught a woman's. Even the approach of an enemy could not have made him more alert.
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