Gilbert Cannan

“ All night long he lay sweating with horror at what he had done. The idea that he had taken a positive step was a terror to him, but directly he thought of Stella he was helpless. Her charm oozed over him, made him glow, stiffen into an unwonted and intoxicating virility which collapsed at the most inconvenient moments, just, for instance, when he saw himself as heroic, making a career for himself for her sake, or writing that comic book he had often thought of to make her laugh. ”

“ High spirits prevailed, and Digby found, as other men have found, that once the idea of his marriage was accepted he had very little to do with it. He liked that because he was used to living automatically, but he resented Stella's being taken away from him and transformed out of being Stella into a bride. She escaped every now and then but never for very long. It seemed that the whole wisdom of her sex had to be imparted to her. Digby found that life was moving faster than ever before and gave it up as hopeless. ”

“ Marwood in her sweet low tone, "I always did say that Digby had a delightful sense of humour."
Digby sank into silence. It was over. Everything was over. Never again for him would there be another situation. Life might be good to Stella: he hoped to God it might be; but life, which had never troubled much about him, had finished with him for ever. Nothing had happened. Nothing ever could happen. He had expected nothing and had got what he expected.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929. ”

“ He was filled with a strange clear ecstasy, and he saw the two women sitting there on either side of him as terrible monsters who hated and loathed each other and were bound together in their hatred and in their common concentration upon himself, both demanding of him something that was not there, that could not be there, something that had existed that night under the moon and the pine-trees, something that was not in him or in any man, something perhaps that only women of all things created can perceive in life, something that turns the terror of existence into charm. ”

“ Once again life had moved too fast for Digby Tissand, who was one of those people whom everybody likes because they expect nothing and get what they expect. He was in nobody's way except his own, but fortunately he was on good terms with himself and had inherited a comfortable income. ”

“ When people discussed him, which was seldom, they said that he had a sense of humour.
He had a little brown moustache and absurd steady brown eyes, and he was always good-natured, never speaking unkindly of anyone and not knowing enough of what was going on about him to carry tales or gossip. It was positively indecent how people flirted in his presence. He saw nothing, because everything was too quick for him. ”

“ He had many acquaintances but no friends; and he lived in a tiny box of a flat in Westminster, because that was the place to which he had drifted when he came to London, for no particular reason except that his "set" at Oxford had all gone to London. They had succeeded, married, become important; but he remained unimportant and thereby enjoyed a certain distinction. There were times, however, when he longed for some woman to take him seriously, but that never happened and by the time he was thirty he had put that hope from him, and found consolation in adoring the heroines in books. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1955, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 68 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”