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He thought over every word, as he wrote it down, his eyes sometimes a little dim in the lamp-light. The very reserve imposed upon him did but strengthen his passion. Nor could young hopes believe in ultimate defeat. At the same time, the thought of Faversham held the background of his mind.
For the first minute or two, coming in out of the dark and before my eyes got used to the lamp-light, I had an impression as of a little old woman one of those fresh-faced, well-preserved, little old ladies who dressed young, wore false teeth, and aped the giddy girl. But this was because of Mrs Head's impulsive welcome of me, and her grey hair.
His lithe, graceful movements had at first led me to mark him down as a mere lad; but now the lamp-light showed a maze of incipient wrinkles on the sunburnt neck, and a few silver threads in the thick, strong, coalblack hair. Moreover, owing to inadvertence or ignorance on the part of people who should have known better, he had been christened in immediate succession to a girl.
Once more I see the heavy-raftered room, the two old smiling faces, the golden circle of the lamp-light, and she, my Marie, the bride of my youth, won so strangely, and kept for so short a time. It was late when we parted. The old man came with me into the hall. "You can go by the front door or the back," said he. "The back way is the shorter."
I left Lucille in her corner there while I went across to the buffet to fill a flask. I was gone barely five minutes; but when I came back the change in the child’s face fairly startled me. I had seen it last with the smile it always wore for me on it, looking so childishly happy in the lamp-light. Now it was all gray-pale and distorted; and the great blue eyes told me directly with what.
Sanchia, first to reach him, passed her arm through his and held resolutely to his side. As they came close and into the lamp-light from the cabin door their two faces hid nothing of their two emotions. Longstreet's was one of whole-hearted triumph; Sanchia's of shrewdness and determination.
As she bent her head to look at her bosom, which she was about fully to uncover, the lamp-light gleaming among the gems and flashing in her hair and down her loosened white silken robe to her naked feet, shining, blue-veined and half-hidden in the green rushes that covered the floor, she seemed to be herself the source from which the lurid light was shed about the room.
Thus he returned home quivering, his brain seething with projects; and of an evening threw off sketches on bits of paper, in the lamp-light, without being able to decide by what he ought to begin the series of grand productions that he dreamt about. One serious obstacle was the smallness of his studio.
There were some nights of deep snowfall, when Charles Street was white and muffled and the door-bell foredoomed to silence, which seemed little islands of lamp-light, of enlarged and intensified vision.
His voice rang out cheerfully to the waiting listener. "That's it, Mother! That's it! Just one more step now. Why, you're doing fine! I knew the word of Danny's coming home would put you on your feet again. The lad'll be here soon, thank God! Maybe before another nightfall." A moment later and the lamp-light threw another shadow on the yellow blind, plain as a photograph.
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