Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 28, 2025
Girlishly eager her fingers shook with excitement as she ripped the covering from a small gold case attached to a slender chain. She pressed the spring and uttered a little cry of delight. The miniature of Craven had been painted by a French artist visiting Yokohama and was a faithful portrait. "Oh, Bar-ree," she gasped with shining eyes, lifting her face like a child for his kiss.
Bar-ree! my love " Her voice broke in a frightened whisper as he caught her head in his hands and stared down at her with eyes that terrified her. "Your love?" he repeated with a strange ring in his voice, and then he laughed a terrible laugh that echoed horribly in the silent night and seemed to snap some tension in his brain. He tore away her hands and fled down the steps into the garden.
She had troubled him distressed him. She had "made a scene" the phrase, read in some English book, flashed through her mind. Englishmen hated scenes. She gripped herself resolutely and when he left his chair and joined her she smiled at him bravely. "See, all the djinns are gone, Bar-ree," she said with a little nervous laugh. He guessed the struggle she was making and chimed in with her mood.
Gradually her sobs subsided and her hand slipped into his clutching it tightly. She sat up at last with a little sigh, pushing the heavy hair off her forehead wearily, and forcing herself to meet his eyes looked at him sorrowfully, with quivering lips. "Please forgive, Bar-ree," she whispered humbly and her humility hurt him more even than her distress.
She could not comprehend this terrible change in the man who had never been anything but gentle with her. She only knew that he was going, that something inexplicable was taking him from her. A wild scream burst from her lips and she sprang across the verandah, clinging to him frantically, her upturned face beseeching, striving to hold him. "Bar-ree, Bar-ree! you must not go. I die without you.
Craven did not move. "Try again, O Hara San." A low bubble of girlish laughter rippled out. "Please to come in, Bar-ree." He turned slowly, looking bigger than ever by contrast with the slender little Japanese girl who faced him.
"It is a thousand moons since you are gone," she whispered unsteadily. "Are you glad to see me?" Her grey eyes opened suddenly with a look of utter content and happiness. "You know, Bar-ree. Oh, Bar-ree!" His face clouded, the teasing word that rose to his lips died away unspoken and he pressed her head against him almost roughly to hide the look of trusting devotion that suddenly hurt him.
"Who gave you this?" he asked thickly, and O Hara San stared at him in bewilderment, frightened at the strangeness of his voice. "My mother," she said wonderingly. "He was Bar-ree, too. See," she added pointing with a slender forefinger to the name engraved inside the case. A nightbird shrieked weirdly close to the house and a sudden gust of wind moaned through the pine trees.
Was this happiness that he had given her, the culminating joy of all the goodness and kindness that he had lavished on her, no happiness to him? The thought stabbed poignantly. She choked back a sob and raised her head, but at the sight of his face the question she would have asked froze on her lips. "Bar-ree! you are not angry with me?" she whispered desperately.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking