United States or Montenegro ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
At once Prosper's hand laid down its pencil and he turned about in his chair and gave her a gleaming look and smile. Joan was fairly startled. It was as if she had touched some mysterious spring and turned on a dazzling, unexpected light. As a matter of fact, Prosper's heart had leapt at her wistful and beseeching voice. He had been biding his time.
The man, to Prosper's mind, was an insensate brute, deserving of death, even of torment, most deserving of Joan's desertion, nevertheless, it was not easy to harden his nerves against the picture of a man left, wounded and helpless, to die slowly alone. Prosper went back expecting to find a dead man, went back as a murderer visits the scene of his crime.
It was in March, a gray, still afternoon, when, looking through Prosper's bookcase, she came upon the tale again. Prosper was outdoors cutting a tunnel, freshly blocked with snow, and Joan, having finished the "Life of Cellini," a writer she loathed, but whose gorgeous fabrications her master had forced her to read, now hurried to the book-shelves in search of something more to her taste.
A certain degree of discretion was noticeable in this rustic youth! "You are quite right," he answered gravely, "as yours is a mining camp where there are no other women, Still, you don't want any one TOO old or decrepit. There is an elderly maiden lady" But a change was transparently visible on Prosper's simple face, and the manager paused.
I mean" she pushed up the braid a little from wrinkling brows "jest blue is awful pretty an' jest green. They're sort of cool, an' yeller, that's sure fine. You'd like to take it in your hands. Red is most too much like feelin' things. I dunno, it most hurts an' yet it warms you up, too. If I hed to live here " Prosper's eyebrows lifted a trifle.
She never looked up at all, but muttered and sighed vainly to herself and warmed her hands. Lastly, in a round-backed chair, cross-legged, twirling his thumbs, twinkling with comfortable repletion, sat Prosper's friend of the road, Brother Bonaccord of Lucca. "God save you, gentleman," he chirped. "I see we have the same taste in lodgings. None of your Holy Thorns for us hey?
Prosper's dream visited him for two nights of his journey back, and four nights at High March; but as no word or other warning came from Gracedieu to give it point, he grew to have some strange liking for it, since he knew that it meant nothing. It gave him new thoughts of Isoult; it convinced him, for instance, that since the girl was so good she must be affectionate when you came to know her.
This proposal seemed to stir up all of Prosper's anger. "Never!" he exclaimed with excitement, "no, never will I voluntarily set eyes on that wretch!" This resistance did not surprise M. Verduret. "I can understand your feelings toward him," said he, "but at the same time I hope you will change your mind.
Over and over to herself she whispered Prosper's name as she ran "Prosper! Prosper le Gai! Prosper! Prosper, my lord!" and so on, just as if she were mad. It was in the course of these distracted pranks that she discovered and fell in love with a young pine tree, slim and straight. She cut a heart in it with his name set in the midst and her own beneath.
The gentleman, whose opinion about our friends on the other side of the Atlantic was very different from Mr. Prosper's, fell into a long argument on the subject. But he was obliged at last to give up his companion.
Word Of The Day