Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 23, 2025
"And even if, like the God of the others, it doesn't vouchsafe a special sign and wonder, it's Benlian, for all that?" "Oh, do be quick, Benlian! I can't bear another minute!" Then, for the last time, he turned his great eaten-out eyes on me. "I seal you mine, Pudgie!" he said. Then his eyes fastened themselves on the statue. I waited for a quarter of an hour, scarcely breathing.
"Take that thing off," he just ordered again. I've got to remember, of course, that you didn't know Benlian. I didn't then. And for a chap just to stalk into a fellow's place, and tell him to photograph him, and order him about ... but you'll see in a minute. I took the shade off my eyes, just to show him that I could browbeat a bit too.
And if Benlian didn't understand all about those things, I should jolly well like to know who does! A chap with a great abounding will and brain like him, it's only natural he should be able to pass himself on, to a statue or anything else, when he really tried did without food and talk and sleep in order to save himself up for it! "A man can't both do and be," I remember he said to me once.
But as suddenly as a shot, right in the middle of it all, I found myself wondering about Benlian again. And I wasn't only wondering; somehow I was horribly uneasy about him. It came to me that he might be ill or something. And all the fun of her having come to see me was gone.
Benlian wanted them for the diary, so that it could be seen there wasn't any fake about the prints. For he'd said he would make a final spurt that evening and get the job finished. It had taken a long time, but I'll bet you couldn't have passed yourself any quicker. When I got back he was sitting in the chair he'd hardly left for weeks, and the diary was on the table by his side.
And one night I was so sure that it wasn't fancy that I jumped straight up from my work, and I'm not quite sure what happened then, until I found myself in his studio, just as if I'd walked there in my sleep. And he seemed to be waiting for me, for there was a chair by his own, in front of the statue. "What is it, Benlian?" I burst out.
I and the doctor who was not ill lifted him on the canvas stretcher. The green-gleaming frame of fluctuating light was passed over the whole of his body. Then the doctor ran to a telephone and called a colleague.... We spent the morning there, with dozens of doctors coming and going. Then we left. All the way home in the cab Benlian chuckled to himself. "That scared 'em, Pudgie!" he chuckled.
But he very soon saw that I didn't, and he came down to my level again. Well, as it happened, I had once photographed a drawing for a fellow, and the easel I had stood it on had come up through the picture; and I knew by the way Benlian nodded that that was the kind of thing he meant. "More," he said.
"He's so much force, no more, and he can either make himself with it or something else. If he tries to do both, he does both imperfectly. I'm going to do one perfect thing." Oh, he was a queer chap! Fancy, a fellow making a thing like that statue, out of himself, and then wanting somebody to adore him! I ran to my landing and shouted down into the yard. "Benlian! Benlian!"
A dog was howling somewhere, and I hoped that the hooting of the tugs wouldn't disturb Benlian.... Nearly an hour had passed when, all of a sudden, I pushed my chair farther away and cowered back, gnawing my fingers, very frightened. Benlian had suddenly moved. He'd set himself forward in his chair, and he seemed to be strangling.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking