Louis Joseph Vance

“ And when Sally darted across and down the steps she found the lawns, the terrace, and the formal garden, too, peopled with paired shadows, murmurous with soft voices and low-pitched laughter.
And she who quartered so swiftly and so diligently that maze of lights and shadows found nowhere the one she wanted, but everywhere the confirmation of her secret thought--that there was no place here for her, no room, no welcome. On every hand love lurked, lingered, languished, but not for her. Whichever way she turned she saw some lover searching for his mistress, but not for her. ”

“ It's a silent web of side ways and a gloomy one by night that backs up north of Les Halles: old Paris, taciturn and sombre, steeped in its memories of grim romance. But for infrequent, flickering, corner lamps, the street that welcomed them from the doors of the warm and cosy restaurant was as dismal as an alley in some city of the dead. Its houses with their mansard roofs and boarded windows bent their heads together like mutes at a wake, black-cloaked and hooded; seldom one showed a light; never one betrayed by any sound the life that lurked behind its jealous blinds. ”

“ In flooding sunlight the woodlands basked and steamed, and a great stillness brooded over all the wilderness. Long before any sound audible to human ears disturbed the noonday hush, a bobcat sunning on a log in a glade to which no trail led, pricked ears, rose, glanced over-shoulder with a snarl, and—of a sudden—was no more there.
Perhaps two minutes later a succession of remote crashings began to be heard, the sound made by some heavy body forcing a way through the underbrush. Soon a man broke into the clearing and reeled to a seat on the log, shuddering uncontrollably in all his limbs. ”

“ In the north the lighthouse stood like a horn on the brow of the headland, the lamp continuing to flash even though its light was darkened, its beams out-stripped by the radiant forerunners of the sun. Beyond it, over a breadth of water populated by an ocean-going tug with three barges in tow and a becalmed lumber schooner, a low-lying point of land (perhaps an island) thrust out into the west. On the nearer land human life was quickening: here and there pale streamers of smoke swung up from hidden chimneys on its wooded rises.
Whitaker eyed them with longing. ”

“ Maitland sat forward, resting his forearms on the apron, and jerked his cigarette out over the gates; the glowing stub described a fiery arc and took the water with a hiss. Warm whiffs of the river's sweet and salty breath fanned his face gratefully, and he became aware that there was a moon. His gaze roving at will, he nodded an even-tempered approbation of the night's splendor: in the city a thing unsuspected.
Never, he thought, had he known moonlight so pure, so silvery and strong. Shadows of gates and posts lay upon the forward deck like stencils of lamp-black upon white marble. ”

“ The air grew colder, Lucinda and the Lontaines grateful for the wraps which Summerlad had pressed upon them. In the course of half an hour the car halted on an isolate peak, and all the lowlands lay unfolded to their vision, from the foothills to the sea, a land like a violet pool with a myriad winking facets of blue-white light; as some vast store of diamonds might be strewn by hands of heedless prodigality upon a dark velvet field. ”

“ The Eirene plowed on toward the coast; gradually it loomed before her bows until its outlines were easily to be discerned with the unaided eye—a long, low border of shelving beach that was tossed back from the sea in yellow sand hills, irregular, studded with clumps of stunted grass: hills that stretched away inland to the eastern horizon in a broken perspective of rounded forms, sweltering beneath the sky of brass and its unblinking sun, lonely, desolate and barren—a monstrous bald place upon the poll of the earth. Not a sign of life was there; naught but sand and silence and the sun. ”

“ With one consent residence and shop and sky-scraping hotel blinked apathetically at the flying car; then once more turned and slept. Even the Bizarre had forgotten P. Sybarite—showed at least no sign of recognition as he scurried past.
A curious sense of illusion troubled the little man. The glamour of the night was gone and with it all that had lent semblance of plausibility to his incredible career; daylight forced all back into confused and distorted perspective, like the pageant of some fantastic and disordered dream uncertainly recalled long hours after waking. ”

“ Alone in her hired hansom the Princess Sofia sat with the window raised, drinking deep of the soft damp air, finding it as heady as strange wine. Under cover of the veil her eyes were brilliant with awareness of her audacity, her lips were parted with the promise of a smile.
She loved it all, she adored this mood of London: its nights of rain were sheer enchantment, arabesque, nights of secrecy and stealth, mystery, and romance under the rose. On nights such as this lovers prospered, adventures were to the venturesome, brave rewards to the bold. ”

“ Sunlight swept the street from side to side, a pitiless and withering blast. Already every trace of last night's shower had vanished, blotted up by an atmosphere all a-quiver with the impetuous passion of those early, slanting rays. As if every living thing had been driven to shelter, or dared not venture forth, the street was quiet and empty. In violent contrast, the tides of life ran brawling through Longacre Square on one hand and Eighth Avenue on the other.
Joan turned toward the latter, moving listlessly enough once she had gained the grateful shadow of its easterly sidewalks. ”

“ A great drum roared like the crack of Doom; and Amber's jaw dropped. For in the high roof of the temple a six-foot slab had been noiselessly withdrawn, and through it a cold shaft of moonlight fell, cutting the gloom like a gigantic rapier, and smote with its immaculate radiance the true Gateway of Swords.
Not six paces from him it leaped out of the darkness in an iridescent sheen: an arch a scant ten feet in height, and in span double the width of a big man's shoulders, woven across like a weaver's frame with ribbons of pale fire. ”