The late afternoon sky bloomed in the window for a moment like the blue honey of the Mediterranean – then the shrill voice of Mrs. McKee called me back into the room.
Isabella was quite stirred; she wound her handkerchief into a tight ball, and by the faint light that streamed over her, dropped it deliberately on the floor. Their hands touched for an instant, but neither spoke. Silences were becoming more frequent and more delicious.
A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.
So he waited, listening for a moment loner to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her. At his lips’ touch she blossomed for him like a flower and the incarnation was complete.
Amory selected a blade of grass and nibbled at it scientifically.
I wish I was in print. It will be odd a year or so from now when Scottie assures her friends I was an author and finds that no book is procurable.
It was a time of youth and war, and there was never so much love around.
As for the well-known Amory, he would write immortal literature if he were sure enough about anything to risk telling anyone else about it.
Try fiction,” suggested Tom. “Trouble is I get distracted when I start to write stories – get afraid I’m doing it instead of living -.
So we beat on, boats against the current.
I hadn’t the faintest idea what ‘this matter’ was, but I was more annoyed than interested.
He lit Daisy’s cigarette from a trembling match, and sat down with her on a couch far across the room, where there was no light save what the gleaming floor bounced in from the hall.
I’m tres old and tres bored, Tom,” said Amory one day, stretching himself at ease in the comfortable window-seat. He always felt most natural in a recumbent position.
Suddenly one of these gypsies in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and moving her hands like Frisco dances out alone on the canvas platform.
Era uno di quei rari sorrisi dotati di un’eterna rassicurazione, uno di quelli in cui t’imbatti quattro o cinque volte al massimo nella vita.
I was entirely unconvinced about anything, except that some people were strong and attractive and could do what they wanted, and others were caught and disgraced.
He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a third. After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her presence. He had been full of the idea so long, dreamed it right through to the end, waited with his teeth set, so to speak, at an inconceivable pitch of intensity. Now, in the reaction, he was running down like an over-wound clock.
Mrs. Gilbert added flavor to his adventure by being impressed with his courage in braving the harsh air.
Oh, it’s so hard to write you what I really feel when I think about you so much; you’ve gotten to mean to me a dream that I can’t put on paper any more.
He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God. So he waited, listening for a moment longer to the tuning-fork that had been struck upon a star. Then he kissed her.