Marie Van Vorst

“ Over the face of the desert there seemed to be nothing but one veil of light. The silence grew so intense, so deep; the Arabs had stopped singing, but the heart fairly echoed, and Julia grew meditative—before her eyes the caravan she waited for seemed to come out of the moonlit mist, rocking, rocking—the camels and the huddled figures of the riders, their shadows cast upon the sand.
And now Tremont would be forever changed in her mind. A man who had suffered from his youth, a warm-hearted boy, defrauded of his early love. It seemed to her that he was a charming figure to lead Sabron. ”

“ Under the low eaves the bed-chamber shone out gay with chintz, fresh and sweet as a midwinter bouquet, the frostiness coming in around it through the slightly opened window, and there was the scent of the firs and the cedar wood that closely hemmed the old place in.
"Heavens!" thought the Duchess, half aloud. "How dreadfully in love Jimmy Bulstrode is, how dreadfully, faithfully in love!" And then she went on to say: "How dreadfully I am myself in love, and no one is hurrying to me!" ”

“ The May afternoon, all sunshine and sparkle, had a wine to make young hope spring from old graves and age forget its years, and youth mad with its handicaps; a day to inspire passion, talent, desire, and to make even goodness take new wings.
With the crowd of interested and curious, Antony Fairfax entered Central Park through the Seventy-second Street gate. Lines of carriages extended far into Fifth Avenue, and he walked along by the side of a smart victoria where a pretty woman sat under her sunshade and smiled on the world and spring. ”

“ Instead of reproving him as she had done before, instead of snatching away her hands, she swayed, and at the sight of her weakness his eyes cleared, and the film lifted like a curtain. She was not fainting, but, as her face turned toward his, he saw it transformed, and Dan caught her in her dark dress, the flowers in her bodice, to his heart. He held her as if he had snatched her from a wreck and in a safe embrace lifted her high to the shore of a coral strand. He kissed her, first timidly, wonderingly, with the sacrament of first love on his lips. ”

“ As Bulstrode stood in the window of his room at Westboro' Castle, his face turned toward the country, it seemed to beckon him. It called him from the park's end where suave and smooth the curving downs met the preciser contour of the eastern field; from hedges holding snugly in the roadways, the roads themselves running off on pleasant excursions to townships whose names are suggestive of romance, whose gentle beauties have mellowed with the ages which give them value and leave them perfect. ”

“ With great effort he raised himself on his arm and scanned the desert stretching on all sides like a rosy sea. Along the river bank the pale and delicate blossom and leaf of the mimosa lay like a bluish veil, and the smell of the evening and the smell of the mimosa flower and the perfumes of the weeds came to him, aromatic and sweet. Above his head the blue sky was ablaze with stars and directly over him the evening star hung like a crystal lamp. But there was no beauty in it for the wounded officer who looked in vain to the dark shadows on the desert that might mean approaching human life. ”

“ Now he limped beside him, powerful, clever, acknowledged, and moreover, there he stood beside him with memories that Cedersholm would never know, with memories that linked him with Mary Faversham-Cedersholm. In an unguarded moment that cry had escaped from the heart of a man who must have loved her. He thought of the bas-relief that hung always above her bed, and he thought of her silence, more eloquent now to him even than Antony's cry, and that silence and that cry would haunt him till the end, and the silence could never be broken now that she had gone through the Open Door. ”

“ Besnard is a child of fortune; success came to him early, and he has no stories to relate of struggle and despair. Of the rough way to Fame he is ignorant, of the tortures which stimulated and deepened the experience of Rodin, of the long and painful route of Puvis de Chavannes to recognition Besnard knows nothing! He has no hardships to recount: one of the happy ones in the world of art, he is singularly devoid of history. He takes a calm and cheerful satisfaction in the facts of his successes, and is delighted to have no complaint to make of public or critics. ”

“ During the last sand-storm he stood, with the camels, round Sabron's litter, a human shade and shield, and when the storm ceased, he fell like one dead, and the Arabs pulled off his boots and put him to bed like a child.
One sundown, as they traveled into the after-glow with the East behind them, when Tremont thought he could not endure another day of the voyage, when the pallor and waxness of Sabron's face were like death itself, Hammet Abou, who rode ahead, cried out and pulled up his camel short. He waved his arm. ”

“ It so declared itself to be the first unmistakable white. A gardener's basket full of roses and camelias, gardenias and carnations had been sent up for her; but under the diamond at her breast she chose rather to fasten in a spray of mistletoe with its pale, grape-like berries. A long green scarf fell over her arm and against the whiteness of her dress like a branch of spring verdure, and permitted by the fashion of the day, there shook and trembled in her ears long, pear-shaped pearls which, like her thimble, had been her mother's. ”

“ Emmeline sent him her thimble, her lace collar, her wedding ring and a lock of her hair, shining still and without a touch of grey. The packet, wrapped up in soft paper and folded by jasmine leaves and buds, whose withered petals were like a faded dress, Fairfax put away in his trunk and did not untie; he did not wish to open his wound. And his face, thinner from his illness and his loss, looked ten years older. The early happy ecstasy of youth was gone, and a bitter, mature recklessness took its place, and there was no hand to soothe him but Molly's, and she had gone back to Troy. ”