The Triumph of Life; A Novel (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: II The Feline Principle A KNOCK. No answer. Another and another, each more imperative than the last. Still not a sound from within the room. The door opened. She lay as if lifeless, a figure of nebulous midnight, bizarre, funereal, necromantic, her pall of impalpable secret crescents in mysterious accord with the gleam and umbrage of her hair. She heard him enter quickly, then start. Her eyelids quivered. She wanted to peer through her shadowy lashes ? but no; to do so would be to laugh. His appearance at the moment must undoubtedly be absurd. She determined to take the mischief in good earnest. Presently he stepped nearer. She held her breath. So far so good. But, alas! the machinations even of a Celeste frequently miscarry. Even those who from birth have an imp at the ear are now and then hoist with their own petard. Mischief is never reliable. Better no guardian spirit at all than an imp who apes an angel. For example, in the present instance, away flitted Celeste's from her ear and fell to tickling her nose. A wild desire to sneeze, due perhaps to her vigil at the window, snatched her back from the bourn of death and ruined its beautiful melancholy. Nevertheless, with Spartan endurance of the torture she kept her eyesclosed and checked the impulse ? a facial, nasal, and even psychical proceeding that served, by the traces of pain on her features, to convey the effect of a troubled slumber. At this she heard a deep-drawn sigh of relief, and the footsteps came softly to the sofa. As though in a dream she raised one hand with languorous grace and rested her head on the palm. Thus by a natural change of pose she bared an arm, whereof the skin, either with a faint, inherent olive tinge or shaded by the seemingly suffusive darkness of her hair, conveyed a...