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The many-paned semicircular windows of these rooms dimly glistened, below their fan-shaped, slated roofs. The crowding scurry of scared, over-driven animals was so indisputable that Damaris expected a universal smashing of glass. But the sound of many hoofs, still muted by sliding sand, passed straight on into and through the house as though no obstacle intervened barring progress.
"Spy through the keyhole, then; or hide in one of the empty rooms across the corridor, and watch " A muted mutter from the direction of the desk dried speech on Victor's lips. He started hastily toward the source of the sound, midway wheeled, and dismissed the maid with a brusque hand and monosyllable "Go!" then fairly pounced upon the telephone.
And Mother Mayberry caught at the top of the gate as the girl slipped the nodding baby down into her arms and in her wonderful muted voice hummed the Grail motif while the Deacon raised his thin old hands and lined out the "Hail, holy, holy, holy Lord, Whom one in three we know " on through its verses to its final invocation of the "Supreme, essential One, adored In co-eternal Three."
Creeping noiselessly through the brush he reached the trail which led downward to the beach. Then he stopped and listened. The soft grating of a muted chain caused him to drop lower in the grass and draw back. Silently he retraced his steps until he reached the cover of the heavier brush which fringed the hillside. The strange vessel was dropping anchor again in the little cove.
Nesta came. Her short look at him was fond, her voice not faltering; she laid her hand under his arm and walked round the spacious room, praising the general design, admiring the porcelain, the ferns, friezes, hangings, and the grand piano, the ebony inlaid music-stands, the firegrates and plaques, the ottomans, the tone of neutral colour that, as in sound, muted splendour.
Furthermore, these establishments have lacked the deportmental abandon which saves their prototypes in Paris from downright banality. All of their deviltries have been muted, as if the guests suffered from a pathological fear of pleasure. Strangers we were when we entered. As strangers we take our departure. Why do I linger thus, you ask, over these hothouse caperings?
The night is heavy and there is no moon. Gilles becomes nervous, scrutinizing the shadows, listening to the muted sounds of the nocturnal landscape; his companions, terrified, huddle close together, trembling and whispering at the slightest stirring of the air. Suddenly a cry of anguish is raised. They hesitate, then they advance, groping in the darkness.
Thus he had stood for fully ten minutes listening in vain for any sound within the house. All was still as death. He began to think that the bell was out of order. He had forgotten Hartley Parrish's insistence on quiet. All bells at Harkings rang, discreetly muted, in the servants' hall. He stepped out of the porch on to the drive.
Today, when I hoped they had all gone out, I had such a longing to play a little that I muted my strings and played to myself in a whisper what I could remember of a very beautiful thing of Ravel's that Kloster showed me the other day, the most haunting, exquisite thing; and I hummed the weird harmonies as I went along, because they are what is so particularly wonderful about it.
And now all hint of pursuit had died out. Tall houses stood muted against the sky; dim trees cast a leafy obscurity; stars glinted remotely like diamonds set in gun-metal. He found a healing chastity in his sudden aloneness; it roused in him an almost angry desire to recover his lost monasticism.
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