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How strange, how amazing, to reflect that from all parts of London, from their doubtless important avocations, one unseen, mysterious beckoner had brought all these men here together, to this sordid place, on this bitterly cold, dreary day.
Oh, yes: Oleron thought he was the man to deal with Fair Ones who beckoned, and invited, and then took refuge in shyness and hanging back! He did not return until after eleven that night. "Now, my Fair Beckoner!" he murmured as he walked along the alley and felt in his pocket for his keys....
It was a simple but embarrassing game, calling for the exercise of considerable tact when played by adults. At the present moment Phillis was beckoner, while Dolly, Dermott, and the Admiral stood meekly in line awaiting selection.
A roomy, stately place for those whose lives move easily in such surroundings; for Ippolita, the girl of the people, happy in her dark tenement in the Vicolo, gossip of the upper windows, shy beckoner to the street, burnisher of doorposts at sundown for Ippolita this windy great house was a prison, neither more nor less.
She paused an instant to collect herself, and then went softly toward the bony beckoner. A nearer look revealed black threads tied to the arm and fingers, the ends of threads disappearing through holes bored in the back of the case. Peeping into the dark recess, she also caught sight of the tip of an elbow covered with a rough gray cloth which she knew very well.
The sitter arose and walked out quietly, and went with the beckoner and looked in at the lid, and saw what had once been a boy with soft eyes and tender heart. Coming back to the library the smell of varnish was for a moment blown out of the wide entry by the breath of the clover that wandered in, and reminded the silent company of the song and the sunshine and bloom that were outside.
If the person wished for is near, say forty yards off, the beckoner puts out his right hand on a level with his breast, and makes the motion of catching the other by shutting the fingers and drawing him to himself: if the person is further off, this motion is exaggerated by lifting up the right hand as high as he can; he brings it down with a sweep towards the ground, the hand being still held prone as before.
'Without the same queen beckoner too! he added presently; 'and there is pride there, not to be forgotten witness our own acquaintance! With that he fell into a deeper reverie, and sat pondering over the blackening grate, until he rose up like a man who had been absorbed in a book, and looking round him took his hat and gloves, went to where his horse was waiting, mounted, and rode away through the lighted streets, for it was evening.
This invitation might or might not be a genuine one, for sometimes the player on responding was received by the beckoner with hisses and other symptoms of distaste, and fell back ignominiously on the main body. But if you were the real object of the beckoner's affections, you were greeted with embraces and a cry of "I choose you!" and succeeded to the proud post of "It."
It was through a thought of the dead Madley that he made it. Since that night when he had thought in his greenness that a little studied neglect would bring the lovely Beckoner to her knees, and had made use of her own jealousy to banish her, he had not set eyes on those fifteen discarded chapters of Romilly. He had thrown them back into the window-seat, forgotten their very existence.
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