Ethel M. Dell

“ She turned her face once more to the open, and as she did so she heard again in the hut behind her that agonized sound, half-cough, half-whine, of an animal exhausted and in the extremity of mortal fear.
It was enough for Avery. She grasped the situation on the instant, and on the instant she acted. She felt as if a helpless and tortured being had cried to her for deliverance, and all that was great in her responded to the cry.
She seized the crazy shutter that was propped against the wall, put forth her strength, and lifted it out into the open. ”

“ She drew his head down with quivering courage and bestowed a butterfly kiss upon his cheek. And then in a second she was gone from his hold, gone like a woodland elf with a tinkle of laughter and the skipping of fairy feet.
Sir Eustace followed her flight with his eyes only, but in those eyes was the leaping fire of a passion that burned around her in an ever-narrowing circle. She knew that it was there, but she would not look back to see it. For deep in her heart she feared that flame as she feared nothing else on earth. ”

“ At one end of the settee, against the leopard skin, something gold was shining. Saltash's look was fixed upon it as he drew near.
He reached the settee treading noiselessly. He stood beside it, looking down. And over his dark face with its weary lines and cynical mouth, its melancholy and its bitterness, there came a light such as neither man nor woman had ever seen upon it before. For there before him, curled up like a tired puppy, her tumbled, golden hair lying in ringlets over the leopard skin, was Toby, asleep in the dim, red lamplight. ”

“ It had been snowing for hours, steadily, thickly, and the cold was intense. The dead heather by the roadside had long been completely hidden under that ever-increasing load. It lay in great billows of white wherever the carriage lamps revealed it, stretching away into the darkness, an immense, untrodden desert, wrapped in a deathly silence, more terrible than any sound.
It seemed to Nan, shivering inside that cheerless cab, as if the world had stopped like a run-down watch, and that she alone, with her melancholy equipage, retained in all that vast stillness the power to move. ”

“ THE HOLIDAY The soft thudding of cows’ feet through the red mud of a Devon lane—the chirruping call of a girl’s voice in their rear—the warning note of a blackbird in the hedge—and the magic fragrance of honeysuckle everywhere! Was ever summer day so fair? Was ever world so green?
“Drat that young Minnie! If she hasn’t taken the wrong turning again!” cried the voice that had chirruped to the herd, and there followed a chuckling laugh that had in it that indescribable sweetness of tone which is peculiar only to those of a contented mind.
It took Frances Thorold by storm—that laugh. ”

“ The afternoon sunlight lay blindingly upon all things. The heat of it hung laden in the air. But she could not sleep or even try to rest. Her arm throbbed and burned with a ceaseless pain, and ever the thought of Beelzebub, lying in the loft "like a sick dog," oppressed her like an evil dream.
The shadows had begun to lengthen a little when at last she rose. She could bear it no longer. Whatever the consequences, she could endure them more easily than this torture of inactivity. As for Curtis she believed him fully capable of taking care of himself. ”

“ And ever the roar of the sea grew louder and louder.
Across the pool, carved in the blackness of the outstretched curving scimitar of rock, there was a ledge, washed smooth by every tide, but a foot or more above the water when the tide was out. It was inaccessible save by way of the pool itself, and yet it had the look of a pathway cut in the face of the Spear Point Rock. The moonlight gleamed upon its wet surface. In the very centre of the great curving rock there was a deeper darkness that might have been a cave. ”

“ Suddenly there came a tumult in the corridor without—a hoarse yelling and the rush of many feet. It was the sound she had been listening for, but it startled, it unnerved her. And in that instant Pierre thrust through her guard and with a lightning twist of the wrist sent her weapon hurtling through the air.
The sound of its fall was lost in the clamour outside the door—a clamour so sudden and so horrible that it did for Stephanie that which nothing else on earth could have accomplished. It drove her to the man she hated for protection. ”

“ Youth and health, and a dawning, unconscious beauty had sprung to life upon her face. She was no longer the frightened, bereft child of Simla days. She no longer hid a monstrous fear in her heart. She had put it all away from her wisely, resolutely, as a tale that is told.
The wild wind had blown the hair all loose about her face by the time the last goal was won. Hatless, flushed, and laughing, she drew back from the fray, Olga, elated by victory, clinging to her arm. ”

“ In that hour Anne Carfax went down into that Place of Desolation which some call hell and some the bitter school of sorrow—that place in which each soul is alone with its agony and its sin, that place where no light shines and no voice is heard, where, groping along the edge of destruction, the wanderer seeks its Maker and finds Him not, where even the Son of God Himself once lost His faith. ”

“ Bertrand, traversing the lawn bareheaded, was keenly aware of tragedy; but it did not delay his steps. He went down the shady path that led to Chris's retreat at a speed that left him breathless. He paused with his hand to his heart as he reached the yew-tree before plunging into the gloom beneath its great, drooping branches. He was living too fast, and he knew it, could almost feel his life running out like the sand in an hour-glass. ”

“ He wanted to call to her as one calls to his mate.
Perhaps some hidden telepathy warned her of his presence, perhaps she heard the call, unuttered though it was, for even as that unaccountable thrill went through him she moved, turned with a strange deliberation and faced him. She showed no surprise, spoke no word, her silence and her passivity surrounding her as though with a magic circle which none might cross without her leave. The mantle of her unobtrusiveness had fallen from her. She stood, superbly erect, queen-like in her pose and the unconscious dignity of her aloofness. ”

“ The rose-vines were whipped from the veranda and flung writhing in all directions. The trees in the compound strove like terrified creatures in the grip of a giant. The heat of the blast was like tongues of flame blown from an immense furnace. Merryon's whole body seemed to be wrapped in fire. With a fierce movement, he stripped the coat from him and flung it into the room behind him. He was alone save for the devils that raged in that pandemonium. ”

“ In a calm and temperate atmosphere she could have attained a serene, unruffled happiness. But India, fevered and pitiless, held her in scorching grip. She dwelt as it were on the edge of a roaring furnace that consumed some victims every day. Her life was strung up to a pitch that frightened her. The very intensity of the love that Everard Monck had practically forced into being within her was almost more than she could bear. It hurt her like the searing of a flame, and yet in the hurt there was rapture. For the icy blast of the desert could never reach her now. ”

“ In a moment a youth with eyes ablaze with adoration sprang on to a table in the centre of the vast room with a glass of red wine held high.
"A Rozelle! A Rozelle!"
The cry went up to the domed roof in a great crescendo of sound, and instantly the place was a pandemonium of shouting, excited figures. They crowded towards the table at which the danseuse still stood. And just for a second—one fleeting second—her eyes showed a curious fear. She stood almost as one at a loss. Then in a flash her irresolution was gone. Her beautiful face smiled its own inimitable smile. ”

“ With loving words she soothed her, calming her as though she had been a child in nightmare terror, and gradually a certain peace began to still the horror in Dinah's soul. An unmistakable drowsiness was stealing over her, a merciful lethargy lulling the sensibilities that had been so acutely tried. Her weakness was merging into a sense of almost blissful repose. She was no longer conscious of the anguish of the cold. Neither did the darkness trouble her. ”

“ It was not a restful night for Randal Courteney, and in the early morning he was out again, striding over the sunlit sands towards his own particular bathing-cove beyond the breakwater.
The tide was coming in, and the dashing water filled all the world with its music. A brisk wind was blowing, and the waves were high.
It was the sort of sea that Courteney revelled in, and he trusted that, at that early hour, he would be free from all intrusion. So accustomed to privacy was he that he had come to regard the place almost as his own. ”

“ All her life Muriel remembered Daisy's welcome of that evening with a thrill of pain. They met at the gate of the little compound that surrounded the bungalow Will had taken for his wife, and though the light of the sinking sun smote with a certain ruddiness upon Daisy, Muriel was unspeakably shocked by her appearance.
Her white hair, her deathly pallor, the haunting misery of her eyes—above all, her silence—went straight to the girl's heart. Without a single word she gathered Daisy close in her warm young arms and so held her in a long and speechless embrace. ”

“ Time passed. The moon rose higher, filling the room with its weird cold light. Avery lay asleep.
Exhaustion had done for her what no effort of will could have accomplished, closing her eyes, drawing a soft veil of oblivion across her misery.
But it was only a temporary lull. The senses were too alert, too fevered, for true repose. That blessed interval of unconsciousness was all too short. After a brief, brief respite she began to dream.
And in her dream she saw a man being tortured in a burning, fiery furnace, imprisoned behind bars of iron, writhing, wrestling, agonizing, to be free. ”

“ Merefleet watched the ardent, flushed face with a deep reverence. He had not seen it so vividly since the day he had kissed it for the last time and gone forth into the seething sea of life to fight the whirlpools. Well, he had emerged triumphant so far as earthly success went. He had breasted the tide and risen above the billows. He was wealthy, and he was celebrated. No mortal power rose up in his path to baulk him of his desire. Only desire itself had failed him, and ambition had become mockery. ”

“ An innocent man had been found guilty, and that was the end. He was beyond the reach of any lenient influence now that justice had failed him. They had pushed him over the edge of the precipice—this man who had dared to climb so high; and in the hissings and groanings of the crowd he heard the death-knell of his honour.
In silence he went down into the abyss. In silence he passed out of Trevor Mordaunt's life. Only as he went, for one strange second, as though drawn by some magnetic force, his eyes, dark and still, met those of the Englishman, with his level, unfaltering scrutiny. ”

“ She was as a prisoner chained to a rock, yet waiting for a sure deliverance. Utter weariness possessed her, a weakness so complete that there were hours together when she would lie, conscious but too exhausted for thought or feeling, and with a dim wonder watch the strangers about her bed.
They were very constantly about her—those strangers. She came to know them by name though she hardly ever spoke to them except to whisper a word of thanks for some service rendered. They would not let her speak from the very outset. They always hushed her into silence whenever she attempted it. ”

“ The thought of Columbine had gone wholly from him, even as the thought of his lost treasure. Only the elemental desire of life gripped him, vital and urgent, forcing him to the greatest physical effort he had ever made. He went like a goaded animal, savage, stubborn, fiercely surmounting every obstacle, driven not so much by fear as by a furious determination to frustrate the fate that menaced him.
It must have been nearly a minute later that the moon shone forth again, throwing gleaming streaks of brightness upon the mighty breakers that had swallowed the magic pool. ”

“ The sudden quiet after the awful turmoil they had just left was like the silence of death.
The man stood still and wiped the sweat in a dazed fashion from his face. The little dancer reeled back against the wall, panting desperately.
For a space neither moved. Then, terribly, the silence was rent by a crash and the roar of flames. An awful redness leapt across the darkness of the night, revealing each to each. ”

“ His red-rimmed, sunken eyes gazed like the eyes of a dead man straight into the sunrise. So motionless were they, so utterly void of expression, that she thought they must be blind. There was something fateful, something terrible in the aloofness of him. It was as if an invisible circle surrounded him within which none might intrude.
And close at hand—so close that she could have touched his turbaned head as she stood—the great Sikh bearer, Peter, sat huddled in a heap on the soft green earth and rocked himself to and fro like a child in trouble. ”

“ She came to herself slowly, with a quaking heart. It was more horrible to her than anything she had known since the days of her flight from the beleaguered fort; but she knew that she must fight down her horror, she knew as certainly as if a physical force compelled her that she would have to go to the window, would have to open to the man who waited there.
Slowly she brought her quivering body into subjection, while every nerve twitched and clamoured to escape. Slowly she dragged herself back to the vision that had struck her with that paralysis of terror. ”

“ She was as one caught in the meshes of a great enchantment. He opened the door, and she passed through on to the verandah.
The music throbbed into silence behind them. Before them lay a fairy-world of dazzling silver and deepest, darkest sapphire. The mountains stood in solemn grandeur, domes of white mystery. The great vault of the sky was alight with stars, and a wonderful moon hung like a silver shield almost in the zenith.
"How—beautiful!" breathed Dinah.
The air was crystal clear, cold but not piercing. The absolute stillness held her spell-bound. ”