Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 5, 2025
"Gorman," I said, "you gave me to understand a minute or so ago that you went in for the old-fashioned kind of soul, the kind we were both brought up to. I'm not at all sure that I wouldn't rather have Mrs. Ascher's new kind, even if it " "Don't start talking about begonias again," said Gorman. "I wasn't going to.
He came into that studio, a place charged with the smell of damp clay, like a breeze from a nice green field. He was in a thoroughly good temper. I suspect that he hurt Mrs. Ascher's hand when he shook it. "I've just been looking at Mrs. Ascher's statue of your soul," I said. "Splendid muscles in the calves of its legs. You must be enormously proud of them."
It seems strange now, looking back on it, that such an emotion should have been possible; but at the moment I felt an overmastering sense of awful joy at Ascher's news. "I cannot tell you where I have been to-night," said Ascher, "nor with whom I have been talking. Still less must I repeat what I have heard, but this much I think I may say.
You can't help yourself." I have no doubt that Gorman meant exactly what he said. If he had been in Ascher's position, if once the issue became quite plain to him and the tangle of political alliances were swept away, he would have thrown all his interests and every other kind of honour to the wind.
I was not conscious that my eyes had wandered to Mrs. Ascher's dress until Gorman winked at me. Fortunately Ascher noticed neither my glance nor Gorman's wink. I had not thought of suggesting that Mrs. Briggs' stage costume was no more daring than what Mrs. Ascher wore. "Of course," said Ascher, "she wouldn't come to supper in tights. It's her other clothes she's thinking of.
"Gorman," I said, "did it ever occur to you that Mrs. Ascher's soul is like a begonia?" "Bother Mrs. Ascher's soul!" said Gorman. "I'm not thinking about it. The circus is a show you might take a nun to. Nobody could possibly object to it. The reason I headed her off was because I wanted to talk business to Ascher, very particular business and rather important.
He had done well enough so far, but he scarcely understood how near to the edge of Mrs. Ascher's credulity he had gone. "What Mr. Gorman means," I said, "is that you must have men, organised, you know, and drilled, before you can give them guns. Just at present there are very few volunteers in Mr. Gorman's part of Ireland. He's going to enroll a lot more.
In fact I don't know if you'll understand, but what she means by a soul is something quite different, not the same sort of soul." I understood perfectly. I have met several women of Mrs. Ascher's kind. They are rather boastful about their souls and even talk of saving or losing them.
Wallie Ascher had grinned that winning flash lighting up his dark, keen face. "No. I learned that in another school." Wallie Ascher's early career in the theatre, if repeated here, might almost be a tiresome repetition of Hahn's beginning. And what Augustin Daly had been to Sid Hahn's imagination and ambition, Sid Hahn was to Wallie's.
"And you understood?" As a matter of fact I had not understood at the moment. Von Richter said very little, and what little he said concerned Ascher's business and had nothing to do with me. He told Ascher to move very cautiously, to risk as little as possible, to keep the money of his firm within reach for a few months. That, as well as I can remember, was all he said; but he repeated it.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking