Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
The room was large, and the fire, though bright, and one shaded lamp standing on a low table, left the greater part of it in shadow. When I gave up the attempt to read, I had gone to the farther end of it to lie on a sofa which was quite in the shade. About midnight the door into Ideala's room opened and she stood on the threshold with a loose white wrapper round her.
"There's a girl dying" and she clutched Ideala's arm, trying to drag her along with her "or she would die and have done with it, but she can't till she's seen you. She've something on her mind something to tell you. Come, my lady, come, for the love of the Lord and the Blessed Virgin. No harm'll happen to you." Ideala made a gesture. "Show me the way," she said. "But you don't seem able to walk.
I hoped Claudia's plain speaking had made an impression, but for a long time after that it seemed as if Ideala's interest in life had really ended, that her sphere of usefulness had contracted, and that she herself would become like the rest a doer of unconnected trifles that have meaning only as the straws have meaning which show which way the current sets.
That remark of hers having broken the ice, they began to talk like human beings with something in common. But Ideala's mood was not calculated to produce a good impression. The failure of her enterprise brought on a fit of recklessness such as we understood, and she said some things which must have made a stranger think her peculiar.
It was a trick of Ideala's to miss the true import of a thing often an act of her own until the occasion had passed, or to see it strangely distorted, as she frequently did at this time though that gradually ceased altogether as she grew older; but it was this peculiarity, so strongly marked in her, which first helped me to comprehend a curious trait there is in the moral nature of men and women while it is still in process of development.
At first, Lorrimer had rebelled, not realising that Ideala's last decision was irrevocable. "You have over-persuaded her," he said. "No," I answered; "I have convinced her. And I shall convince you, too." He pleaded for her pathetically, not for himself at all. "She has had so little joy!" he said; using the very words that had occurred to me. "And I wanted to silence her.
On the way to the river Ideala's spirits rose again, and they all talked lightly, making a jest of everything; but while they were waiting for a boat, Julian took up a bunch of charms that were attached to Ideala's watch-chain and began to examine them coolly, and the unwonted familiarity startled her. With a sudden revulsion of feeling she turned to Lorrimer.
Only part of the platform was roofed in, and every now and then a gust of wind splashed the raindrops into their faces as they stood beside Ideala's luggage in a circle of yellow light cast upwards by a lantern which the inspector had put on the ground at their feet. "There's me and Tom, the porter," he said at last; "we've got to wait for the two o'clock down and the four o'clock up.
Ideala's determination to be faithful to what she conceived to be her duty had kept her quiet hitherto, but now a sense of personal degradation made her desperate, and she forgot all that. Her first impulse was to consult somebody, to speak and find means to put an end to her misery; but I was not there, and to whom should she go for advice. Her impatience brooked no delay.
The incident was related at our house one evening, in Ideala's presence, by Mr. Lloyd, a mutual friend. A clever drawing by another friend, of Ideala trying to force a cabman to take ten shillings for a half-crown fare one of the great fears of her life being the chance of not giving people of that kind as much as they expected had caused Ideala to protest that she did understand money matters.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking