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His brother. Slowly he tore the letter in two, the halves into quarters, the quarters into infinitesimal squares. He took a pinch of them and extended his arm, dropping the particles of paper upon the current of the wind. They rose, fell, eddied, swam, and rose again, finally to fall on the roofs below. Again and again he repeated this act, till not a single square remained in his hand.
She cringed and cried with pain as he seized her arm and twisted her forcibly around so that she faced him. "Stop this fooling and tell me what has happened!" he said, with short, incisive accents. "Who did you find shot? Who has been murdered?" Oh, it was admirable acting, she told herself as she tore herself away from him and stood back a little, her eyes flashing with scorn and horror.
"The clerk sent this up to you, sir," he said. "It came a week ago. When you went away, you didn't leave any address, and whatever letters came for you were sent back to Bayport, Massachusetts. The clerk says you registered from there, sir. But he kept this telegram. It was in your box, and the day clerk forgot to give it to you this afternoon." The captain tore open the envelope.
It seemed absurd to write to Lady So-and-so, thanking her for an invitation so long gone by. All the same, he would like to see her, and all his friends, the most tedious would be welcome now. He tore open the envelopes, reading the letters greedily, unsuspicious of one amongst them which would make him forget the others a letter from Evelyn.
Military discipline, I need not tell you, Major, doesn't take into account the sensitiveness of a recruit's back. It flatly denies such a phenomenon. Now I think I can defy anything in God's quaint universe to make me itch. But that's by the way. I tore the letter up and never answered it. You do these things, sir, when the whole universe seems to be a stumbling-block and an offence.
They were all armed, some with revolvers, others with the horrible little bludgeons they call "killers," a short heavy bar of lead set on a strong copper spring, no bigger than an ordinary round office ruler, but more deadly at close quarters than a revolver. I flung up my left hand, tore down the lamp that hung just above us, and hurled it among them.
Otherwise than as his great deliberation seemed unnatural, and perhaps the result of an effort equally great, he allowed no sign of emotion to escape him. When he had read it through, he folded and refolded it slowly several times, and tore it carefully into fragments.
'I ran out when they said the church was on fire, sobbed the poor creature, 'and the Jews beat and wounded me. They tore my shawl and tunic off me before I could get away from them; and then our own people ran over me and trod me down. And now my husband will beat me, if I ever get home. Quick! up this side street, or we shall be murdered! The armed men, whosoever they were, were close on them.
But it was only a little country servant crouching on the tiny landing that united the two sets of stairs from the court, with her apron over her head: she must have been in the partitioned west end of the chapel to hear the mass. He said a word to her; and the next instant was pushed aside, as a man tore by bearing a great bundle of stuffs vestments and the altar cloths.
The room turned suddenly dark to Isabel's eyes; and she put up her hand and tore at the collar round her throat. "Oh no, no, no, no!" she cried, and tottered a step or two forward and stood swaying. Lady Maxwell looked from one to another with eyes that seemed to see nothing; and her lips stirred again.
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