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It was dark enough for any kind of deviltry in that four-hundred foot gash in the earth; the sinking moon lightened only a strip along the east wall, near the top; lower down, smoke mingling with the natural gloom cast an impenetrable veil from bank to bank; not a breath of air stirred the tomblike stillness. Directly in front of us a horse coughed.
As she spoke, her eyes were fixed on a tomblike hollow of the cliff, and she saw, she averred the same to me with solemnity, Idris pacing slowly towards this cave. She was turned from her, her head was bent down, her white dress was such as she was accustomed to wear, except that a thin crape-like veil covered her golden tresses, and concealed her as a dim transparent mist.
Even from his own house he found himself shut out, an exile and a stranger! Loudly he shouted for admission, savagely beat upon the planks, all to no purpose. There came no sound from within, no answering word or sign. Eagerly listening for perhaps the cry of his child, he heard nothing. A tomblike silence brooded there, as in all the stricken colony.
Here the hollows made by gravel-digging on the edge of the heath are being, in a measure, filled up with earth from the building going on near by, and opposite The Elms, on the brow of the common, a peculiar tomblike building is noticed. This is merely a spring-house covering the artesian well that supplies the drinking-fountain in the village.
There was a tenderness in her manner, especially toward Harry, that spoke of something deeper and awoke in my own breast a deeper respect for her. The world had not known Desiree Le Mire it had merely been fascinated and amused by her. Many hours had passed in this tomblike apathy. Two or three times I had advised Desiree to lie down to rest and, if possible, to sleep.
This tomblike quality in their surroundings seemed to make their own vitality stronger and more palpitating. The seconds of silence, after the grating of the key in the lock ceased, seemed hours. Then the Knight spoke. "Give me the lantern," he said. She met his eyes. Again the dignity of her Office slipped from her. Again it was sweet to obey.
Two hundred pairs of superstitious eyes peered into the horrible gloom two hundred pairs of ears strained at the tomblike stillness. The suspense was awful, and none dared move.
They had gone out from a ship filled with a monstrous clangour and confusion, they were returning to a tomblike hulk, a lonely mass in which echoes would abound, a thing of sighs and silences, the corpse of a mammoth that had throbbed yesterday, but never more. Up in the curving triangle of the forward deck were two long, canvas-covered rows. The dead!
After the warmth of the March sun outdoors the house was cold with that clammy, penetrating, tomblike chill of the Italian home. "Tina!" she called. From the rear of the house came a cackle of voices. Tina was gossiping. There was no smell of supper in the air. Mary Gowd shrugged patient shoulders.
The rift seemed to form a kind of circle, for he walked on and on, ever trending to the right, never able to see more than a short distance in front; never able to behold the sky. There was something silently, horribly eloquent in the grim sameness of those tomblike walls. Just then, to his relief, the semi-gloom widened into light. The cliffs no longer overhung each other.
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