Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 7, 2025
They looked at another image, they opened to another light. Was it a credible future? Was it an incredible past? Whatever the answer it was an immense escape from the actual. It's true that if there weren't other dates than this there were other memories; and by the time George Stransom was fifty-five such memories had greatly multiplied.
In regard to those from whom one was separated by the long curves of the globe such a connexion could only be an improvement: it brought them instantly within reach. Of course there were gaps in the constellation, for Stransom knew he could only pretend to act for his own, and it wasn't every figure passing before his eyes into the great obscure that was entitled to a memorial.
That son of affliction wasn't in mourning now; he detached his arm from his companion's to grasp the hand of the older friend. He coloured as well as smiled in the strong light of the shop when Stransom raised a tentative hat to the lady. Stransom had just time to see she was pretty before he found himself gaping at a fact more portentous. "My dear fellow, let me make you acquainted with my wife."
She gave a wan smile which seemed to Stransom stranger even than the fact itself. "I never, never spoke of him." He looked again about the room. "Why then, if your life had been so full of him?" "Mayn't I put you that question as well? Hadn't your life also been full of him?" "Any one's, every one's life who had the wonderful experience of knowing him.
But the air of this devoted and indifferent woman, who always made, in any attitude, a beautiful accidental line, conveyed somehow to Stransom that she had known more kinds of trouble than one. He had a great love of music and little time for the joy of it; but occasionally, when workaday noises were muffled by Saturday afternoons, it used to come back to him that there were glories.
"Women aren't like men. They can love even where they've suffered." "Women are wonderful," said Stransom. "But I assure you I've forgiven him too." "If I had known of anything so strange I wouldn't have brought you here." "So that we might have gone on in our ignorance to the last?" "What do you call the last?" she asked, smiling still. At this he could smile back at her.
He paused on a corner and measured the dreariness; then he made out through the gathered dusk that he was in one of those tracts of London which are less gloomy by night than by day, because, in the former case of the civil gift of light. By day there was nothing, but by night there were lamps, and George Stransom was in a mood that made lamps good in themselves.
This breath of the passion immortal was all that other had asked; the descent of Mary Antrim opened his spirit with a great compunctious throb for the descent of Acton Hague. It was as if Stransom had read what her eyes said to him. After a moment he looked round in a despair that made him feel as if the source of life were ebbing.
He thanked her, opening his watch and pleading an engagement for which he was already late, and they parted while she shrieked into the fog, "Mind now you come to see me right away!" Creston had had the delicacy not to suggest that, and Stransom hoped it hurt him somewhere to hear her scream it to all the echoes. He felt quite determined, as he walked away, never in his life to go near her.
Creston, making a step to look at something else, came nearer, glanced at him, started and exclaimed behaviour the effect of which was at first only to leave Stransom staring, staring back across the months at the different face, the wholly other face, the poor man had shown him last, the blurred ravaged mask bent over the open grave by which they had stood together.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking