United States or Aruba ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Never before had he seen that look on Helen's face. Were his nightmares following him home? For the first time in his life he had a sense of inadequacy. Helen was not pleased with him. He was not being what she wanted. He fell miserably silent. Helen continued to gaze into the fire. The Infant of Prague calmly reflected the golden lamplight in the wonderful depths of its polished surface.
He fell into a fevered slumber, from which he awoke every few minutes, feeling that he had been asleep for hours. The room was stifling: he was burning from head to foot: he was horribly thirsty: he suffered from ridiculous nightmares, which clung to him even after he had opened his eyes: sharp pains thudded in him like the blows of a hammer.
That night, when all was thick darkness beyond the magic circle of the fires, the People of the Little Hills sat or crouched trembling and wondering, while monstrous dim shapes of such bears or tigers as they had never imagined in their worst nightmares prowled roaring all about them, held off by nothing more substantial than just those thin and darting tongues of flame.
They were horribly fragmentary; they broke off and pieced on to each other like nightmares; one moment he was rescued, and the next tomahawked. And this last fancy, despite all her struggles to hope, was for the most part victorious. Meantime Coronado, guessing her sufferings, and suffering horribly himself with jealousy, talked much and sympathetically to her of Thurstane.
You understand, then, distinctly, that I do not believe there is anything about this singular little neighbor of mine which is as it should not be. Probably a visit to his room would clear up all that has puzzled me, and make me laugh at the notions which began, I suppose, in nightmares, and ended by keeping my imagination at work so as almost to make me uncomfortable at times.
I pass over the bedrooms. I will simply say that they are nightmares. Expensive nightmares! I come to the lamps how many have we?" "Fourteen." "Fourteen atrocities, imitation Louis Seize, bogus Oriental, feathered, laced and tasseled. So much for useful presents. Now for decoration.
It is certainly congestion that makes night hideous with visions, all the chambers of a many-storied caravanserai, haunted with vociferous nightmares, and many wakeful people come down late for breakfast in the morning. Upon that theory the cynic may explain the whole affair exhilaration, nightmares, pomp of tongue and all.
Was it a dream? Was it Louie? Or was it only some one of the tormenting phantoms that for so many burning days had haunted him? He tried in vain to ask: his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth; he seemed to be in the power of one of those fierce nightmares where life depends on a word and the word is not to be spoken.
In the best of spirits, and looking the bronzed picture of perfect health, Ronnie returned to his club, lunched, showed his 'cello to two or three friends, then caught the three o'clock train to Hollymead. The seven months were over. All nightmares seemed to have cleared away. He was on his way to Helen. In an hour and a half he would be with her!
And what made his condition of mind border on imbecility was a hurried whisper from Arthurs between innings: "Peg, don't pay the slightest attention to 'em fat-head grad. coaches." Practice days succeeding that were worse nightmares to Ken Ward than the days he had spent in constant fear of the sophomores.
Word Of The Day