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Updated: May 23, 2025
In her anxiety Eleanore looked first at one object in the room and then at another; first at the bathing nymph, then at the silk curtains, then at the Chinese lampshade. “Well, sweetheart,” said Herr Diruf, his smile gradually changing into a sort of convulsion, “we are not bad, are we? By the beard of the prophet, we are all right, aren’t we? Hunh?” Eleanore lowered her head.
And she exchanged spiteful remarks with the people who came to see her in her box about the people in the other boxes and about the actresses. The ingenue was said to have a thin voice "like sour mayonnaise," or the great comedienne was dressed "like a lampshade." There was no conversation.
Some merest trifle stood between her and those elfin cries, between her and that thin golden mist in which faintly seen shapes seemed to move shapes almost of tossed arms, waving, brandishing objects strangely all but familiar. That roaring of the sea was not the rushing of her own blood in her ears, that rosy flush not the artificial glow of the cheap red lampshade.
George had needed a lampshade for his room, and she had offered to paint one. She submitted sketches. But George also could paint a bit. Hence discussions, conferences, rival designs, and, lastly, an agreement upon a composite design. Before long, the lampshade craze increasing in virulence, they had between them re-lampshaded the entire house.
She seemed to grow taller, like a scarf drawn out long; looked as if she were pursued and fleeing, and yes, she looked tormented. "It's easy to fail," he heard her say again, "and if I fail, you'd better forget about me, for I'll be one of the worst women that ever lived. I'll be an awful woman!" In the shadowy light above the lampshade he caught her glance again and held it for a moment.
In a little while he was hard at work again, and the only sounds in the room were the ticking of the clock and the subdued shrillness of his quill, hurrying in the very centre of the circle of light his lampshade threw on his table. It was two o'clock before Dr. Kemp had finished his work for the night. He rose, yawned, and went downstairs to bed.
It is winter, he is seated in the corner by the fire, and before him, sitting in the light reflected by a green lampshade upon which dark silhouettes of jockey-riders are running at full speed, his wife is busying herself with some embroidery. Every few moments they look at each other and smile, he over his book and she over her work; the lover never tired of admiring Lucie's delicate fingers.
He had read too many descriptions of all these wonders; seen too many more or less faithful pictures, and in his disenchantment he recalled a lamp-shade which once, in his own home, had excited his childish imagination an ugly lampshade of blue pasteboard upon which was printed a nocturnal fete, the illuminations upon the ducal palace being represented by a row of pin-pricks.
Once, when a little girl, she had loyally jerked it off her grandmother because it added to her ugliness and decrepitude. She shook this out with mocking eyes and threw it decoratively around her shoulders. She strode to the gorgeous peony lampshade and lifting it off, gibbeted it and scattered the fragments on the floor.
And, looking round him for some means of capturing the moth, he rose slowly out of his chair. Suddenly the insect rose, struck the edge of the lampshade Hapley heard the "ping" and vanished into the shadow. In a moment Hapley had whipped off the shade, so that the whole room was illuminated. The thing had disappeared, but soon his practised eye detected it upon the wall paper near the door.
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