half-compact

Updated: July 8, 2026

It sobered him. He had had the impulse to snatch her to his breast, to seal the half-compact with a lover's kiss, so passionate that the memory of it must for ever bind her to him. But the impulse was past. They stood perfectly silent, stiff, in the interval it seemed a very long one between the lightning flash, and the distant reverberation of thunder which followed it.

Mrs. Campbell Praed - Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land: a story of Australian life