Edward Frederic Benson

“ On the ground, in front, lay the resin flare, already burning low; but as Mitsos would fish no more that night he did not replenish it. Lower and lower it burned, but now and then it would shoot up with a sudden leap of flame, revealing each to the other, and Suleima would smile at Mitsos; but before she could see his month smile in answer, the flame would die down again into a flickering spot on the glowing, bubbling ash. But in the darkness she knew he smiled back at her; a whispered word would pass from one to the other, and the last flicker of flame showed a lover to the sight of each. ”

“ Suddenly a wave almost of physical nausea swept over Amelie. She had all the stainless purity of thought of a girl who has been married young to the first man she has ever loved, and in the first moment of her knowing definitely that Bertie at one time had made love to this woman she felt sick—simply sick. She rose from her chair, and put on her gloves, while Dorothy watched her, conscious that some emotion which she herself had so long forgotten, had she ever experienced it, that she no longer comprehended it, mastered her. ”

“ The window was always open—all the windows in the night-nursery were opened as soon as he got into bed—and the blinds were up, and on the ceiling was the most delicious green light, for the early sun shone through the branches of the beeches outside, and painted Archie's ceiling with a pale, milky green which was adorable to contemplate. He would pull up his night-shirt, and with his bare arms clasp his bare knees, and, lying on his back, rather unsteadily anchored, would roll backwards and forwards looking at the green light, and rehearsing all the delightful probabilities of the day. ”

“ Diva suddenly jumped up with a happy squeal of discovery, and in her excitement snapped her scissors with so random a stroke that she completely cut in half the bunch of roses that she was engaged on. There was another cupboard, the best and biggest of all and the most secret and the most discreet. It lay embedded in the wall of the garden-room, cloaked and concealed behind the shelves of a false book-case, which contained no more than the simulacra of books, just books with titles that had never yet appeared on any honest book. ”

“ And what if the whole of England was becoming every year more like a tended greenhouse plant, compared to the blind thrust of forces from the earth in other countries? For all the old landmarks, as the great wheel of human life whirled down the road of the centuries, seemed to be passing out of sight; the world was racing westwards, where America sat high on the seas, grown like some portentous mushroom in a single night. There, at the present moment, the inexorable, relentless logic of nature was working out its everlasting proposition that the one force in the material world was wealth. ”

“ Buttercups spread their gold on the green velvet of the fields, and in the hedges the leaves of the hawthorn were varnished with the dew, and cascades of starry blossom, vigorous and refreshed by the night, were spilled and sprayed over them. Then still mounting, she came to the down, all carpeted with thyme and cushions of rockrose, and stiff and springy to the feet with its short closegrowing grasses. Harebells trembled on wire-like stalks, and over all had been thrown the magic shuttle of the gossamer webs. Then turning round, Lucia looked over the hollow that held the town itself. ”

“ The moon had long since sunk, but the galaxy of uncounted worlds flared on their courses, driven onwards by the inexhaustible eternity of creative forces that ran through the stars, even as it ran through the humblest herb that put forth its unnoticed blossom on the wayside. But Archie, in this bitter stagnation that paralysed him, seemed to himself to have no part in life: all that current of energy that bubbled through the world, with its impulses of good and evil, love and hate, seemed to have been cut off from him. ”

“ The sun, declining to its setting, was dropping slowly above a low pass in the hills, shining with an excecding clearness, and it was still half an hour above the horizon when Mitsos got into the boat. The land-breeze was blowing temperate and firm, and his boat dipped to it gently, and glided steadily on the outward tack. Between him and the Argive hills hung a palpable haze of thinnest blue; but the whole plain slept in a garment of gold, woven by the level rays. ”

“ Amelie got up, smoothing her hair back behind her ears. If she had been the most finished coquette, she would have done exactly that; art would have imitated the complete naturalness of the movement. Her face was very pale, and looked infinitely weary, but its beauty, the beauty of that falling river of gold, the beauty of her bare arm, and the gentle swell of her bosom, half seen through the low opening of the neck of her dressing-gown, had never been more dazzling. But her eyes were lustreless; they looked on him as on a stranger. ”

“ Diva did not reply for a moment, but sat with eyes closed in profound and concentrated thought. It required no reflection to decide how impossible it was to appear herself to-morrow in a dress which seemed to ape the costume which all Tilling had seen Elizabeth wearing to-day, and at first it looked as if there was nothing to be done with all those laboriously acquired bunches of rosebuds; for it was clearly out of the question to use them as the decoration for any costume, and idle to think of sewing them back into the snipped and gashed curtains. ”

“ And as they stepped out of the light into the hot thick darkness, it was as if they had stepped into another world altogether, where there was no one but themselves. All thought of Edgar, of Maud, all remembrance of other things faded; all that had any significance was out here in the darkness.
"We must not stop out long," said Lucia, as they stepped from the terrace on to the path; "Edgar will wonder." ”

“ Dying would be like that, dying was no more than being poured into this jubilant ocean, and becoming part of its clean, exuberant life....
But Archie had no intention of dying just yet, and indeed these metaphysical speculations only reached him like the sound of chimes blown across the water, while far clearer was Harry's voice, calling from the beach, "Archie, it's after twelve"; and thereupon Archie would turn on his chest and swim back to land, with a frill of foam encircling his sunburnt throat and a wake of bubbles following the strokes of his strong legs. ”

“ For another more glorious spring was ready to burst forth, and that, which in Greece through a winter of bleak and storm-smitten centuries had lain battered by the volleyings of oppressive clouds, and bitten and stung with frost, had meanwhile so drunk life into all its fibres from that which would have done it to death, that already the green of its upspringing was vivid on the mountain-side, and held promise of a perfect flower, tyranny being turned into the mother of freedom, and smiting into strength. ”

“ It was a March day of glorious windy brightness, and all down the glades of Molesworth, where Bertie and Amelie had sat one hot morning in June last year, innumerable companies of daffodils danced and flickered in the sun. The great trees were yet for the most part bare of leaves, but round the birches a green mist hovered, and the red buds on the limes were ready to burst. Boisterous, but warm and fruitful, and teeming with the promise of the opening year, the wind shouted through the branches, and bowled, as a child bowls a hoop, great fleecy clouds across the blue of the sky. ”

“ With his record of adventure, with the romantic reek of India (and camphor) in the tiger-skin of the rugs that strewed his hall and surged like a rising tide up the wall, with his haughty and gallant manner, with his loud pshawings and sniffs at “nonsense and balderdash,” his thumpings on the table to emphasize an argument, with his wound and his prodigious swipes at golf, his intolerance of any who believed in ghosts, microbes or vegetarianism, there was something dashing and risky about him; you felt that you were in the presence of some hot coal straight from the furnace of creation. ”