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In the Perseus of Cellini we admire the sculptor's spirit, finish of execution, and originality of design, while we deplore that want of sympathy with the heroic character which makes his type of physical beauty slightly vulgar and his facial expression vacuous.
Her conversation was generally of the silly, vacuous sort, concerning chiefly new dresses or bonnets, and Shirley at once read her character frivolous, amusement-loving, empty-headed, irresponsible just the kind of girl to do something foolish without weighing the consequences. After chatting a few moments with Mrs.
With the closing of the door the vacuous look slipped from his face like a mask. The loose-lipped, lost-dog expression was gone. He looked once more alert, competent, fit for the emergency. It had been his cue to let his adversary underestimate him. During the long night ride he had had chances to escape, had he desired to do so. But this had been the last thing he wanted.
There, at the foot of that weedy and vacuous and yet charming old Neptune how perfectly he suits his age! there, if you look, you will see certain gigantic leaves sculptured into the rock. I once overheard a German she-tourist saying to her companion, as she pointed to these things: "Ist doch sonderbar, wie das Wasser so die Pflanzen versteinert."
But Hugh spoke of her fine qualities of head and heart; Alma Frothingham made her an exemplar, and would not one woman see through the vacuous pretentiousness of another? Involuntarily, he was gazing at her, trying to read her face. 'So you think we ought to go to Australia, said Sibyl quietly, returning his look. Hugh had repeated the conversation of last night; indiscreet, but natural.
Wright, Delbridge, and the clerks and stenographers seemed unreal creatures, with flaccid, vacuous faces, as he shook hands with them and answered their conventional queries about his vacation. "Vacation!" The word was not in his vocabulary. "Business! "That, too, was a corpse of a word floating on the still waters of past usage. "Money, stocks, bonds, market-reports!"
To be compelled, at such a time, to lie around in vacuous idleness to spend days that should be crowded full of action in a monotonous, objectless routine of hunting lice, gathering at roll-call, and drawing and cooking our scanty rations, was torturing.
There was a hollow somewhere in my mind into which all serious thoughts fell jumbled. I felt neither pained nor confused, but only vacuous. I battled with this feeling until I subdued it. Then I grasped the situation firmly. What object have I, here and now, and everywhere and always, next to the rectitude of my own soul? There is only one answer to that question: Cecilia's happiness!
In this case, however, the woman showed neither fear nor resentment. Evidently she had suffered so much as to have exhausted her capability for further suffering. She submitted to the other's will like a tired child, dropping into a chair and eyeing him with a vacuous expression. "I am Mrs. George Collins," she answered his question in a weak, listless voice.
She was moreover pitting her skill against one who was her equal if not her superior, and who knew every trail and by-way hereabouts. He was a youth with a vacuous, almost idiotic face, whom she had that same day encountered. He had left her sight, but had never been too remote to follow or gauge her course and what he learned he relayed to others.
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