The Devourers (Paperback)

General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1910 Original Publisher: Putnam Subjects: Fiction / General Fiction / Classics Fiction / Historical Fiction / Literary Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: " Oh, Miss Edith," replied Florence impatiently, " do go to sleep. When a baby gets ' turned round,' it means that it sleeps all day and screams all night." And so it did. A Gentle blue February was slipping out when March tore in with screaming winds and rushing rains. He pushed the diffident'greenness back, and went whistling rudely across the lands. The chilly drenched season stood still. One morning Spring peeped round the corner and dropped a crocus or two and a primrose or two. She whisked off again, with the wind after her, but looked in later between two showers. And suddenly, one day, there she was, enthroned and garlanded. Frost-spangles melted at her feet, and the larks rose. Valeria borrowed Edith's garden-hat, tied it under her chin with a black ribbon, and went out into the young sunshine across the fields. Around her was the gloss of recent green, pushing upwards to the immature blue of the sky. And Tom, her husband, was dead. Tom lay in the dark, away from it all, under it all, in the distant little cemetery of Nervi, where the sea that he loved shone and danced within a stone's-throw of his folded hands. Tom's folded hands That was all she could see of him when she closed her eyes and tried to recall him. She could not remember his face. Try as she would, shutting her eyes with concentrated will, the well- known features wavered and slipped away; and nothing remained before her but those dull white handsas she had seen them last -- terrible, unapproachable hands ...