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Pen and ink had been expressly forbidden, the only book in the house was a thumbed and torn primer, but Dame Joan, after much grumbling at fine ladies' whims, vouchsafed to send up a distaff, some wool, a piece of unbleached linen, and a skein of white thread.
They took a few walks together, during which he rarely spoke, but seemed glad of her silent company. Once he called with her on Mrs. Farraday, and actually held an enormous skein of wool for the old lady while she, busily winding, told them anecdotes of her son James, and of her long dead husband.
Pure space he assumes to be the true magnetic zero, but he pushes his inquiries to ascertain whether among material substances there may not be some which resemble space. If you follow his experiments, you will soon emerge into the light of his results. A torsion-beam was suspended by a skein of cocoon silk; at one end of the beam was fixed a cross-piece 1 1/2 inch long.
Now if, at the present moment, this skein were cut with a straight knife at right angles to its length, the cut end would represent the time plane that is, the present moment of all and it would be the same for all providing that the time plane were flat But is it really flat? Isn't the straightness of the knife a mere poverty of human imagination?
"Too good to be true. She has filled so large a place in my life. I have such a strong admiration for her that it would have been a real pain to have parted coldly. But to keep her as my friend, to know that her affection is unchanged, and yet to be free to seek my own happiness is such a marvellous unravelling of the skein that I can hardly realise my good fortune.
You must not let me detain you beyond the time. 'So he has been talking to her about me, thought Caterina. Her hands began to tremble as she held the skein. Miss Assher continued in the same gracious tone: 'It is tedious work holding these skeins. I am sure I am very much obliged to you.
He looked across and gave a subdued whoop of triumph. From the timber on the opposite shore came a tenuous smoke skein. A man came to the water with a bucket, filled it, and disappeared in the woods. Bully West knew he had caught up with those he was tracking. The smuggler circled the lower end of the lake and rode through the timber toward the smoke.
Then there were the splash or boom of the waves, the piping of the sea-wind, the cry of curlew, or black-backed gulls, all mingled in one great and tangled skein of sound that choked the voice of the speaker, and in their aggregate, bewildered him who hearkened. These, and others which need not be detailed, were problems that had to be met, necessitating many more experiments.
When the pretty lady's-maid pulled a comb of ivory into the midst of the undulating and golden waves of that enormously magnificent skein of silk, one might have said that a thousand sparks of fire darted forth and coruscated away from it in all directions.
Her brown eyes were tearless, not alluring or beseeching or repelling; they did but look, much like the skies opening high aloof on a wreck of storm. Her reddish hair-chestnut, if you will let fall a skein over one of the rugged brows, and softened the ruggedness by making it wilder, as if a great bird were winging across a shoulder of the mountain ridges.
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