Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 10, 2025
He looked at Lawanne, and he could not read what passed in his mind. But when he turned and set out on a run for that shake cabin four hundred yards downstream, Lawanne followed at his heels. They were winded, and their pace had slowed to a hurried walk by the time they reached the cabin. The door stood open. There was no sound.
All about him, then, Hollister perceived strong undercurrents of life flowing sometimes in the open, sometimes underground: Charlie Mills and Myra Bland touched by that universal passion which has brought happiness and pain, dizzy heights of ecstasy and deep abysses of despair to men and women since the beginning of time; Lawanne apparently succumbing to the same malady that touched Mills; Bland moving in the foreground, impassive, stolidly secure in the possession of this desired woman.
Hollister felt a new sort of ache creep into his heart. His eyes stung. And Lawanne suddenly turned away with a choking sound muffled in his throat. They went out into the sunlight. Away down the valley a donkey engine tooted and whirred. High above them an eagle soared, wheeling in great circles about his aerial business. The river whispered in its channel.
Yet if I hadn't reacted so violently, I should never have come here to hide away from what hurt me. So I wouldn't have met you. That would almost make one think there is something in the destiny that you and Lawanne smile at." "Destiny and chance: two names for the same thing, and that thing wholly unaccountable, beyond the scope of human foresight," Doris replied.
"Things happen; that's all we can generally say. We don't know why. Speaking of Lawanne, I wonder if he really does intend to stay here this winter and write a book?" "He says so." "He'll be company for us," she reflected. "He's clever and a little bit cynical, but I like him. He'll help to keep us from getting bored with each other." "Do you think there is any danger of that?" Hollister inquired.
You damned, murdering fool!" Lawanne turned on Bland. "You did this?" Bland did not answer. He put his hand to his face and wiped away the sweat that had gathered in a shiny film on his skin, from which all the ruddiness had fled. Myra's pale, dead face seemed to hold him in some horrible fascination. Hollister shook him. "Why did you do that?" he demanded. Bland heaved a shuddering sigh.
Hollister looked his surprise at the abrupt decision. "I'm sorry you're going." Mills walked a few paces. "Maybe it won't do me any good," he said. "I wonder if Lawanne is right? It just struck me that he is. Anyway, I'm going to try his recipe. Maybe I can kid myself into thinking everything's jake, that the world's a fine sort of place and everything is always lovely.
"Work is what he considers sordid and there is something to be said for his viewpoint, at that. He enjoys himself tramping around with a gun, spending an afternoon to catch half a dozen six-inch trout." "But it is sordid," Lawanne persisted. "Were you ever in their house?" Hollister shook his head. "It isn't as comfortable as your men's bunk house.
To cease thinking, to have done with feeling, to be a clod, dead to desires, to high hopes and heart-numbing fears. "Come in and have a cup of tea and tell me the latest Vancouver scandal," Lawanne urged, when they beached the canoe. Hollister assented. He was as well there as anywhere. If there were an antidote in human intercourse for what afflicted him, that antidote lay in Archie Lawanne.
Myra glanced once at his face and thereafter looked away. But her flow of small talk, the conversational stop-gap of the woman accustomed to social amenities, went on placidly. They were strangers, meeting for the first time in a strange land. Bland had gone up-river with Lawanne. "Jim lives to hunt," Myra said with a short laugh.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking