"Flicker" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pattern being a favorite one. But suddenly there had been a change. In opening one of the rolls and spreading it broadly in the show-room of Messrs. Gobelin's warehouse, it had appeared the most wonderful carpet that ever was known. A real sunlight gleamed over the leaves and flowers, seeming to flicker and dance among them as on a broad meadow. It shed a radiance which paled the light that struggled down between the brick walls through the high windows. It had been subject of such wonder that Messrs. Gobelin had been ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... last flicker of the lantern was gone. I sat and waited; my mind was still keen, but how long would it last? There was a limit even to the endurance of ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... scarcely fail to reach the Queen. Would she remember their childish intimacy? Would she make him a sign? Would she let him see her, for old sake's sake? Oh, in all probability, no. Most certainly, no. And yet—and yet, he couldn't forbid a little furtive hope to flicker in his heart. ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... good enough to show Lord Findon that, in spite of her flicker of gaiety, Eugenie was singularly pale. And he knew well that they were both listening for the same step on the stairs. However, he tried to ...
— Fenwick's Career • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the Grand Duchess of Baden, who had arrived post-haste the night before to be present at the death-bed. The Grand Duchess, as the Emperor spoke, besought him not to tire himself by talking. "I have no time to be tired," he murmured, in a flicker of the sense of duty which had been a lifelong feature of his character, and a few hours later he passed quietly away. The funeral, headed by Prince William and the Knights of the Black Eagle, took place on the 20th. The new Emperor Frederick, who had hurried from San ...
— William of Germany • Stanley Shaw
... flame continued to flicker, but the hand holding the candlestick failed to move, and Bobby knew that the eyes didn't waver, either. He forced his glance from the searching flame. He managed to lower and ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... of his fourth day in Mrs Gabbon's rooms. He had finished a modest dinner and was dealing himself hands at piquet with an old pack of cards, when he heard the rattle of a cab coming up the street. The usual faint flicker of hope rose: the cab stopped below him, the flicker burned brighter, and in an instant he was at the window. He opened the slats of the blind, and the flicker was aflame. Before the doctor's house a four-wheeled cab was standing laden with luggage, ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... part of this speech, and he was so tickled with the last remark that his habitual gravity gave place to the faintest flicker of a smile, while a twinkle gleamed for a moment in his eye. Only for a moment, however. Pointing over the side, he ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... this presentiment of disaster had taken hold upon her, for the beginning of it must have come as imperceptibly as the first flicker of dusk across the radiance of an afternoon. Looking back, she could almost make herself believe that she had seen its shadow over her early satisfaction in her son's marriage to Diane. Certainly she had felt it there before their honeymoon was over. The four years that ...
— The Inner Shrine • Basil King
... herself up for sleep. The rain was falling heavily, as the woman, pail in hand, emerged from the mouth of the alley, and turned down the narrow street, that stretched out, long and black, miles before her. Here and there a flicker of gas lighted an uncertain space of muddy footwalk and gutter; the long rows of houses, except an occasional lager-bier shop, were closed; now and then she met a band of millhands skulking to ...
— Life in the Iron-Mills • Rebecca Harding Davis
... if all the life had gone out of her. She played in Camille Maupin's play, and contributed not a little to the success of that illustrious literary hermaphrodite; but the creation of this character was the last flicker of a bright, dying lamp. On the twentieth night, when Lucien had so far recovered that he had regained his appetite and could walk abroad, and talked of getting to work again, Coralie broke down; a secret trouble was weighing upon her. Berenice always believed that she had promised ...
— A Distinguished Provincial at Paris • Honore de Balzac
... death Flicker'd fast through the wood:— And they found the Red King Red-gilt in his blood. What wells up in his throat? Is it cursing, or prayer? Was it Henry, or Tyrrell, Or demon, who there Has dyed the fell tyrant Twice crimson in gore, While the soul ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... one more effort, painful with unexpressed fulfilment. A flicker of awful yearning took her paling eyes. Life seemed to stammer, pause, then flush as with this last deep impulse to yield a secret she discerned for the first time fully, in the very act of passing out. The face, with its soft loveliness, turned grey in death. Upon the edge of a great disclosure—she ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... flame flickers once more in the huge oven, the baker scrapes incessantly with his shovel, the water simmers in the kettle, and the flicker of the fire on the wall dances as before in silent mockery. While in other men's words we sing out our dumb grief, the weary burden of live men robbed of the sunlight, the ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... our course, and it had become quite dark; still there was no sign of the village,—not even the flicker of lights ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... behind the trees, and the ravine below their path was gloomy. The mood of the day had changed, and he was sorry—for everything. It was a petty matter—it was always some petty thing—that came in between them. He longed to recall the moment on the beach when she had asked him, with a flicker of a smile upon her face, why he had decided to remain in Chicago. But they were strangers to each other now,—hopelessly strangers,—and the worst of it was that ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... looked over his spectacles, and gave the required permission. Perhaps it occurred to his official sense that a bit more dignified attire would suit the occasion better. A flicker of gratification shone on his face at the thought that the Cap'n was so nobly and graciously rising to the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... is it?" Claire was peeping disdainfully from the window. Her throat was bare, and her dusky hair was a shade dishevelled, and in her meditative eyes he caught the flicker of her tardiest dream ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... on a table before him, and he would sit for hours together with his eyes fixed upon them, like a child who, at the moment it first begins to see, gazes in stupid contemplation at the same object, and like the child, a distressful smile would flicker ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... McGee, there's no end of good luck in you, Will-o'-the-wisp, with a flicker of Puck in you, Wild as a bull-pup, and all of his pluck in you— Let a man tread on your coat and he'll see! Eyes like the lakes of Killarney for clarity, Nose that turns up without any vulgarity, ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... recommend his Tesoro to his former pupil. There is a comical touch of nature in an author's solicitude for his little work, not, as in Fielding's case, after its, but his own damnation. We are not sure, but we fancy we catch the momentary flicker of a smile across those serious eyes of Dante's. There is something like humor in the opening verses of the XVI. Paradiso, where Dante tells us how even in heaven he could not help glorying in being gently born,—he who had devoted a ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... to bite then, in the warmth of the day. You might troll by the edges of the lily pads for half an hour, and the pickerel that made his haunt there would scarce wink a sleepy eye, or flicker a fin. At morn and evening they were ready for you; and a quick, sudden whirl in the glassy, black water often gave invitation ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... a flicker of myriad lights. The sound was a roaring now—like the surf on the reefs in the hurricane month; or the thunder of maddened steers above him across this flowery sea meadow. Perhaps the man he had killed rode with this stampede? ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... entire distance, which we travel in brave silence. Indeed, we cannot speak,—the oppressive strain upon the chest is so great. Step after step, hand over hand, up we go. At last, warmer air greets us, lights flicker from above; the trap-door is reached; we are on the surface again; we are out of the depths,—and our hearts whisper ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... "shadding." The pretty Amelanchier Canadensis of Gray—the Aronia of Whittler's song—is called Shad-bush or Shad-blow in Essex County, from its connection with this season; and there is a bird known as the Shad-spirit, which I take to be identical with the flicker or golden-winged woodpecker, whose note is still held to indicate the first day when the fish ascend the river. Upon such slender wings ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... heat and bitter cold, in the biting dust of alkali and under the silence of the primeval bush. For an hour we lounged smoking and chatting in ox-hide chairs, watching the red glow from the range door flicker upon the guns and axes on the wall, or the moonlight broaden across the silent grass outside each time it faded, until the mournful coyotes began to wail along the rim of the prairie and we crawled up a ladder into the little upper room, where in ten minutes we were fast asleep on ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... the day, of the big fish he lost and might have saved, of the distant settlement, of to-morrow's plans. An owl hoots off in the mountain and he thinks of him; if a wolf were to howl or a panther to scream, he would think of him the rest of the night. As it is, things flicker and hover through his mind, and he hardly knows whether it is the past or the present that possesses him. Certain it is, he feels the hush and solitude of the great forest, and, whether he will or not, all his musings are in some way cast ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... reached his hand behind him and produced a second revolver, which he began to clean more hurriedly, more superficially than the first, keeping the while a wary eye on the stooping figure at the table. When that too was finished to his satisfaction and restored to his hip pocket, a flicker of almost childlike amusement crossed his usually immobile features and he started operations with an air of fine unconsciousness upon one of a couple of rifles that stood propped against the tent wall near him. Two years of hardships and danger had left no mark upon ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... perhaps a flicker of admiration. "You are decisive. You have many good qualities, Georg Brende. I wonder if you have any ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... the implements of labor, in the dingy werkstube in Johannis Strasse; lighted by the single flicker of an oil lamp, with the workboard for a writing-desk, let me endeavour to collect some few scattered details about the German ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... over Japan, White butterfly moon! Where the heavy-lidded Buddhas dream To the sound of the cuckoo's call.... The white wings of moon-butterflies Flicker down the streets of the city, Blushing into darkness the useless wicks of round lanterns ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... the door and put up the bar her mother's attention was caught by the change. Peering at her critically, and shading her eyes with her hand from the uncertain flicker of the tallow dip, she broke out, passionately: "Wa'al, 'Genie, who would ever hev thought ez yer cake would be all dough? Sech a laffin', plump, spry gal ez ye useter be—fur all the wort' like a fresky young deer! An' ...
— 'way Down In Lonesome Cove - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... flicker, flicker: The banyan's leaves are thick and fleshy: Of the fan palm's leaf, brother, make a cup. And we will drink the juice of the ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... to bed. The shadows move about, And some one seems to overhear our talk. The fire is low; the candles flicker out; The ghosts of former tenants want to walk. Already they are shuffling through the gloom. I felt an old man touch my shoulder-blade; Once he was married here; they love this room, He and his woman and the child they made. Dead, dead, they are, yet some familiar ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... fine poem describes the Hindoo ascetic sitting by the bank of the sacred stream and watching the legions as they pass while cannon roar and bayonets gleam. To him they are disturbing phantoms, and he longs for the time when they will flicker away like the smoke of the guns on the windswept hill. He meanwhile sits 'musing and fasting and hoping to die.' Fitzjames is the precise antithesis: his heart was with the trampling legions, and for the ascetic he might feel pity, but certainly neither sympathy nor ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... anything steadily while the guns are going. When a big gun goes off or a shell bursts anywhere near you, you seem neither to see nor hear for a moment. You keep on being intermittently stunned. One sees in a kind of flicker in ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... have been something magnetic in Peter's voice and steady gaze as he said, 'Look on us!' It was a strange preface, if only some small coin was to follow. It kindled some flicker of hope of he knew not what in the beggar. He expected to receive 'something' from them, and, no doubt, was asking himself what. Expectation and receptivity were being stirred in him, though he could not divine what was coming. We have no right to assume that his state of mind was ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... sections of fallen roof could we move at all, and beneath the network of this entanglement the majority of the bodies lay, crushed and mangled. I saw Kirby, free from his bonds, but dead beneath a heavy beam. His face was toward us and the flicker of flame revealed a dark spot on his forehead—his life had never been crushed out by that plunging timber which pinned him there; it had been ended by a bullet. My eyes sought hers, in swift memory of my last order, and she must ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... leading into another compartment of the flyer, and before us lay the bodies of eight children. The beetle lifted the first one, a little girl, up until his many-faceted eyes looked full into the closed ones of the child. There was a flicker of an eyelash, a trace of returning color, and then a scream of terror from the child. The beetle set the girl down and Jim bent ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... white and silver doublet, and glowed in the rubies, the Bishop conceived the whimsical fancy that the Knight might well be some splendid archangel, come down to force the Convent gates and carry off a nun to heaven. And the Knight, watching the leaping flame flicker on the Bishop's crimson robes and silvery hair, saw the lenient smile upon the saintly face and took courage as he realised how kindly was the heart, filled with most human sympathy, which beat beneath the cross of gold upon ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... and lighted one of his lamps. As he did so, the flare revealed for an instant his face—square, rather handsome and bearded. A faint flicker of interest, for some reason undefinable to himself at the moment, swept over Mr. Heatherbloom. He had been lying where the grass was tall and now raised himself on his elbow, the better to peer over the waving tops. The car had gathered headway and swung out into the road, when suddenly ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... but later in the evening she brought the purse, and set it on the table where the patient's eyes might rest on it. For aught she could detect, they expressed no thanks, gave no flicker of recognition. But the child had been watching them too, and was quicker—by one-fifth of a ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... sat, Watching the flicker of a fire Were the Colonel played the outdoor host In brave old hall of ancient Night. But ever the dame grew shyer and shyer, Seeming with private grief engrossed— Grief far from ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... amidst a fair green close, Hedged round about with woodbine and red rose, Within the flicker of a white-thorn shade In gentle sleep he found the maiden laid One hand that held a book had fallen away Across her body, and the other lay Upon a marble fountain's plashing rim, Among whose broken waves the fish showed dim, But yet ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... my promise to you. If, like a cat, I had lost my ninth life, I would live after your words. Indeed I imagine that you were the only reason I did live. It was your will that saved me, for I hadn't enough sense or spirit left to do more than flicker out." ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe
... the monster dwarf's words sensible, and he drove the cruel spurs into poor Dolly's sides without mercy and lashed her with the whip. The gallant mare responded with increased speed. But it was like the flicker of a ...
— The Kentucky Ranger • Edward T. Curnick
... in shape, and all around its edge, near to the ground, appeared groups of dull yellow lights, two of them being always side by side. These were motionless at first, but soon began to flicker more brightly and to sway slowly from side to side and ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... seemed to break from the ground at their feet, and in the flicker of an eyelash a shadow lifted up out of the scrub-encumbered level. Sophia cried aloud with alarm; Labertouche swore outright, heedless; and Amber put himself before her, drawing his revolver, heartsick with the conviction that ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... As Ruth half hid a pale yellow bud in her heavy, low-coiled hair, the gravity of her mien seemed to deepen. This was partially the result of her father's expressive countenance and voice. If he had smiled, it had been such a faint flicker that it was forgotten in the look of repression that had followed. In the afternoon he had spoken a ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... do not grant that," the prince cried; "but you are a sensible, clever woman, and you know my heart is easily excited. It is only the meteoric light of the ignis fatuus, soon extinguished. Let it dance and flicker, but remember that the only warmth which cheers and brightens my heart is your love and friendship. You are my first and only love, and you will be my last—that I swear to you, and upon it you can rely. Every thing is uncertain and wavering ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... flicker onaisy, an' our men roared. 'Opin ordher! Double!' sez Crook. 'Blow, child, blow for the honor ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... said Sir John with a smile. "Truly, I was not much impressed with her. If I may be allowed to speak a word of warning, I should say beware of her. She could lie easily, I fancy, with never a blush or the flicker of an eyelid to betray her. No, it was not about her ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... like a purse seine, and hauled it out into the shallows of a small beach. They stood in the shallow water with sea boots on and forked the salmon into their rowboats and laid the rowboats alongside the Blackbird to deliver,—all in the dark without a lantern flicker, with muffled oarlocks and hushed voices. Three times ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... first time, the situation began to affect him personally. In the hours after midnight, as the forces of the physical body ebbed toward the lowest point, those of the mind seemed to increase. Staring at the low night light, that by its feeble flicker exorcised the thousand phantoms that beset him, he could think clearly. In a rocking chair, across the room, the night nurse dozed, with a white shawl wrapped around her. He could hear her deep, regular breathing ...
— Old Rose and Silver • Myrtle Reed
... gloves were tucked in her belt. She had loosened the neck of her blouse and rolled back her sleeves, at the spring above, to bathe her face and arms in the chill overflow. Her hair shone with a soft golden radiance that was ethereal in the flicker of afternoon sunlight through the live-oaks. From her golden head to the tip of her small riding-boot she was a harmony of vigor and grace, of ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... of the warning flashed from the shore. "Guess there must be something hellish afoot after all," he muttered again. "The flicker of green that stopped the signals, and the green fire that got us—what can they mean?" He looked toward the looming black shadow of the island, and began divesting himself of his clinging, sodden garments. "I don't wonder somebody wanted battleships. But ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... Cointets had come to understand David's character and habits. They did not slander him now; on the contrary, wise policy required that they should allow the business to flicker on; it was to their interest indeed to maintain it in a small way, lest it should fall into the hands of some more formidable competitor; they made a practice of sending prospectuses and circulars—job-printing, as it is called—to the Sechard's establishment. So it came about ...
— Two Poets - Lost Illusions Part I • Honore de Balzac
... in the evening. She thought to find her father in his study. But they told her that, now, he usually sat alone in the great drawing-room. She opened the door softly. The room was dark save for a flicker of firelight; she could see nothing. ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... his fingers bleeding and one eye blinded with the sand.... The passageway behind us is almost closed up.... In front of us we have hit a solid wall.... The exhausted mother is binding her boy's hands with a portion of her petticoat.... As she kneels there, with the faint flicker of a light falling on her finely chiseled profile, she resembles Botticelli's magnificent Madonna in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence.... The picture is completed by the dark background and the solicitous attitude of the girls ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... to be tall and broad. He was stooping forward over the mirror. His back was turned to me, but in the glass I saw the reflection of a huge head and face illumined fitfully by the flicker of the night-light. The spectral gray of very early morning stealing in round the edges of the curtains lent an additional horror to the picture, for it fell upon the hair that was tawny and mane-like, hanging about a face whose swollen, rugose features ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... been narrowly on the watch for the flicker of dismay on Guest's face; it came surely enough, but was suppressed by such a gallant effort that, to use her own vernacular, she "weakened" at the sight. The impish light died out of her eyes, and she ...
— Flaming June • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the moonlight. Something similar I see on an old carved dresser. The carving is so delicate that in dim light it shows tiny heads and flames after the fashion of the Catholic church pictures of "poor souls,'' in purgatory. Under certain conditions of illumination the flames flicker, the heads move, and out of the fire the arms raise themselves to the clouds floating above. Now this requires no unusual excitement, simply the weary sensing of evening, when the eyes turn from prolonged uniform reading or writing to something else.[1] It has happened to me from my earliest ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... their meanings—but love! His brow contracted in a frown spreading in a shadowy doubt over his face when he saw that he had almost reached the clubhouse; its long steep-pitched bulk lay directly across the path of dusk, approaching from the east; and a ruddy flicker in the glass doors on the veranda showed that a fire had been lighted. To his left, down over the dead sod and beyond a road, he could see the broad low faade of his house with its terraced lawn and aged stripped maples. There, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... if you'm gwaine up Drift, take care o' all that blessed money. Doan't say no word 'bout it till you'm in the farm, for theer's them—the tinners out o' work an' sich—as 'ud knock 'e on the head for half of it. To think as Michael burned a hunderd pound! Just a flicker o' purpley fire an' a hunderd pound gone! 'Tis 'nough ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... his way in. With soft, cat-like footsteps he crept downstairs, and, looking into one of the rooms, saw Sanza and his wife sleeping on the mats, with their little son Kosanza, a boy of thirteen, curled up in his quilt between them. The light in the night-lamp was at its last flicker, but, peering through the gloom, he could just see the Prince's famous Muramasa sword lying on a sword-rack in the raised part of the room: so he crawled stealthily along until he could reach it, and stuck it in his girdle. Then, drawing ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... fire of straw which had to flicker out; but now the Lord will light you a fire of logs by which the offspring of the Philistines shall be consumed. Do you ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... flicker of interest Zillah Forsyth looked back across her shoulder. "Engaged? How many times?" she ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... on the high veranda overlooking it, watching the dim outlines of the steep hills on the other shore, the flicker of the lights on the island, where there was a boat-house, and listening to the call of the boatmen through the mist. The mist came as certainly as night, whitened by moonshine or starshine. The tin water-pipes went splash, splash, with it all evening, and ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... to form no idea of its proportions. The lighting, purposely subdued, consisted of twelve enormous copper lamps, placed column-like upon the ground and burning with brilliant red flames. As we entered, the wind from the corridor made the flames flicker, momentarily casting about us our own enlarged and misshapen shadows. Then the gust died down, and the flames, no longer flurried, again licked up the darkness with their ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... angle of the building, the ground plan of which is L-shaped. Its two outer sides are formed by covered cloisters leading to the palm-garden, and by moonlight—the night bland and sweet with the odour of growing things, vocal with plashing fountains, spangled with fire-flies that flicker indolently among a glimmering concourse of nymphs and fauns eternally postured in flight or in pursuit—by moonlight, I say, the court at Selwoode is perhaps as satisfactory a spot for a tete-a-tete as this transitory ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... the first midges dance and warm days lure the last-year's butterfly, the scarlet of the cardinals begins to flicker through the ivory smoke of the mosses. Then the alligator leaves his winter ooze, and the widening "O" of the ripple which his gar-like nose makes, travels slowly across the sullen ponds, where the pendant gonfalons of ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... flicker indication for low levels and it'll fail to trip for unaided thought. Not too much ...
— Millennium • Everett B. Cole
... could think best when thought and act might jump together, laugh most quietly when the din of swords and horses drowned the voice, love his neighbour most sincerely when about to cut his throat. The smell of blood, the sight of wounds, or the flicker of blades, made him drunk; but he was one of those who grow steady in their cups. You might count upon him at a pinch. Lastly, he was no fool, and was disposed to credit other people ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... a woman is intriguing in its very naivete, and now as she stood before me, slim and graceful in her well-cut walking costume, a quick flicker of red flaming in her cheeks and her eyes alight with that sweet tantalizing look in which expectation and a hot pride were mingled, I wondered and felt sick at heart. Desirable she was beyond any other woman I had known, and I called myself ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... that she loves me—me! Fate must have her jest, I perceive, though the firmament crack for it. She would have been content enough with Noel, thinking me dead. And with me?" Contemplatively he spat out of the window. "Eh, if I dared hope that this last flicker of life left in my crazy carcass might burn clear! I have but a little while to live; if I dared hope to live that little cleanly! But the next cup of wine, the next light woman?—I have answered more difficult riddles. Choose, ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... the gardener to be buried—how, when the mutton had at length attained to rawness, the fire, which had gradually changed from red-heat to a mere blaze, died down so suddenly that the cook had only just time to catch its last flicker on the end of a match—or how the maid, having taken the mutton off the spit, carried it (backwards, of course) out of the house, to meet the butcher, who was coming (also backwards) ...
— Sylvie and Bruno • Lewis Carroll
... was blazoned with the heraldic insignia of Granada's monarchs. His guard, and his mutes, and his eunuchs, and his courtiers, and his counsellors, and his captains, were ranged in long files on either side the canopy. It seemed the last flicker of the lamp of the Moorish empire, that hollow and unreal pomp! As Muza approached the monarch, he was startled by the change of his countenance: the young and beautiful Boabdil seemed to have grown suddenly old; his eyes were sunken, his countenance sown with wrinkles, and his voice ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... in the pasture stood an old apple tree, all alone by itself. On a dead branch was Ya-rup the Flicker. He was using the hard shell of the dead branch for a drum. "Rat, a tat, tat," he went faster and faster, till the beats ran into one long resounding roll. Then he stopped and screamed, "Kee-yer, kee-yer!" Perhaps he meant, "Well ...
— The Magic Speech Flower - or Little Luke and His Animal Friends • Melvin Hix
... regulated than those available for his dynamo and lamp, Edison realized that he would find it almost impossible to give a steady light. He did not want his customers to count the heart-beats of the engine in the flicker of the lamp. Not a single engine was even within gunshot of the standard thus set up, but the emergency called forth its man in Gardiner C. Sims, a talented draughtsman and designer who had been engaged in locomotive construction and in the engineering ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... for candles and lamps. Each group of workers had a lamp in its centre, and those farthest from the fire had live heat from two braziers filled with glowing wood embers, replenished now and again from the generous hearth. But the flicker of the great fire was manifest to remotest corners, and prevailed beyond the limits of ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the cottage door was open, and Mrs Gray sat at work with the candle close to her elbow, every now and then giving a long sniff or a sigh, that made the tallow candle flicker and tremble. He had almost forgotten her husband's accident in his absorption in the baby; but these sniffs recalled it to his mind, and he thought he would give them a helping hand while Gray was in ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... cordial,—nerving every faculty to action. A draught from your Cabanas, the pulse quickens, the mind clears, and thought awakes, like a fine instrument under the magic touch of a master. The wind moans drearily without, the rain beats dismally against the windows, the fagots flicker blue-flamed and weird in the dark recesses of the chimney-place; but what care I? The white walls are lurid in the flare, the great bed stands out in the darkness like a grotesque engine of the Inquisition; but who suffers? Au troisieme, No. 30, Rue Lepelletier, was never noted for its ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... in close attendance on the Cranston's equipage, basking in the life-giving sunshine and in the thrill and hope and sweet unrest of an ever-growing love, devoted and insistent in spite of vague and jealous dread, for there was not the feeblest flicker of encouragement in Miss Loomis's calm and oft-averted eyes. Langston asked himself in the still hours of the starlit night, camping on the banks of Dismal River, was it possible that her heart was following some soldier in the dusty column, riding ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... in that direction, and saw a smooth polished object with a brass pipe. The flicker from the fire reached him across the snow. The Snow-man felt wonderfully happy, and a feeling came over him which he could not express; but all those who are not ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... straight out of the open air was long and somewhat narrow and not right high; it was well-nigh dark now within, but since he knew where to look, he could see by the flicker that leapt up now and then from the smouldering brands of the hearth amidmost the hall under the luffer, that there were but three men therein, and belike they were even they whom he looked to find there, and for their part they looked for his ...
— The Roots of the Mountains • William Morris
... cool, dark, low-roofed tunnel of Church Street in those interesting blocks just north of Vesey. We hark to the merry crowing of the roosters in the Barclay Street poultry stores; and we look past the tall gray pillars of St. Peter's Church at the flicker of scarlet and gold lights near the altar. The black-robed nuns one often sees along Church Street, with their pale, austere, hooded faces, bring a curious touch of medievalism into the roaring ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... at Linda's house; trouble so terrible that Harriet's unexpected arrival caused no comment, caused no more than a weary flicker of Linda's heavy eyes. Pip, the adored first- born son, lay dangerously ill, and the whole household moved on tiptoe, heartsick with dread. Fred, a white and unshaven Fred, was home in the cold gray midday; the telephone was muted, the hall door stood ajar, the maid was red-eyed. Harriet, ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... opened by a butler of the drearier type—long, lean, grey and listless—who murmured that Prince Saradine was from home at present, but was expected hourly; the house being kept ready for him and his guests. The exhibition of the card with the scrawl of green ink awoke a flicker of life in the parchment face of the depressed retainer, and it was with a certain shaky courtesy that he suggested that the strangers should remain. "His Highness may be here any minute," he said, "and would be distressed to have just missed any gentleman he had ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... last flicker, spluttered, and went out. Someone, it must have been Merik, came into the room and sat down on the bench. He puffed at his pipe, and for an instant lighted up a dark cheek with a patch on it. Yergunov's throat was irritated by the horrible fumes ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... else save the rescue of the priceless harp from destruction. Through the blinding smoke I groped my way to my old sleeping room. I nearly succumbed three or four times before I managed to tear down the tent-cloth. Then, by the flicker of the flames I could see the harp reposing in its hiding place in all its gleaming beauty. I had no time to feel surprised that its silken covering had been blown aside, and indeed was at that very moment fluttering in ...
— Tales of Destiny • Edmund Mitchell
... of the cool of the evening in a poetical sort of way. He was as big as four cart-horses, and all covered with shiny scales—deep-blue scales at the top of him, shading off to a tender sort o' green below. As he breathed, there was that sort of flicker over his nostrils that you see over our chalk roads on a baking windless day in summer. He had his chin on his paws, and I should say he was meditating about things. Oh, yes, a peaceable sort o' beast enough, and not ramping or carrying on or doing anything but what ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... it went (like the thrill in a troublesome tooth) that here was a chance come of feeding, a chance at last of feeding. For the man on the cliff, the despairing watchman, weary of fastening his eyes upon the sea, through constant fog and drizzle, at length had discovered the well-known flicker, the glassy flaw, and the hovering of gulls, and had run along Weighing Lane so fast, to tell his good news in the village, that down he fell and broke his leg, exactly opposite the tailor's shop. And this was on ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... be hastily closed, revealing the squalidness of the interior in which we were quartered. Then someone, growling and stumbling through the darkness, lit a slush lantern, dangling from a blackened beam, its faint flicker barely discernible. The hole became foul and sickening, men tossing and groaning in their uneasy sleep, or prowling about seeking some measure of comfort. There was no severe wind accompanying the storm, and the flurry of rain soon swept by, leaving an ugly swell behind, ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... with an arm flung across the table. Not a muscle of his lax body had grown more taut. But the eyes of the man—the terrible eyes that condemned men to their graves without a flicker of ruth—were fixed on the range-rider with a steady ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... found that women were better listeners than men. Women are perhaps better trained; they think it more ill-mannered not to show interest. They will listen to stories about servants, or reports of the inane sayings of infants, they will hear you through, without the flicker of a yawn, but with ejaculations and noddings, while you tell them about your children's diseases. They are well-bred; they drive themselves on a tight rein, and endure. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... you thinking of going up there?" He considered the question, and his guest, with a flicker in his lighted eyes. "Well, decent is a relative word, you know. However, wonders can be accomplished with a stout rope and a gang of natives, even beyond Dizful. But here you see me and my ark still ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... was possible in the profound darkness, the little troop resumed its march, still under the guidance of Montbar. As they advanced, the leader noticed a smell of smoke which alarmed him. At the same time gleams of light began to flicker on the granite walls at the angles of the path, showing that something strange was happening at the opening ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... sound, and, turning with the quickness of a wild creature, caught the sadness in his face. It seemed to drive away much of her fear and resentment. A half-flicker of a smile came to her lips as their eyes met. It seemed to recognize a comradeship in sorrow. But her face hardened again almost at once into disapproval as he answered ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... I palpitate, a poet;— Can I close dead ears against the rush and resonance of things? Symbols in me breathe and flicker up the heights of the heroic; Earth's worst spawn, you said, and cursed me? look! approve me! I ...
— The Heptalogia • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... they came to the end of the road, rose a hill with a broad plateau on its stomach. Here through the dull haze of the morning they saw smoky-orange lights beginning to flicker uncertainly as the wind that heralds the sunrise came fitfully up. The soft wet grass under their feet was flecked with little grayish-silver cobwebs, and here and there they heard the morning chirp of ground-nesting birds. As they went farther up the hill ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... grin crinkling at the corners of his mouth—a flicker of light in his general gloom. After he had placed the coat in her hands he sat down on the transom and watched her busy fingers. She worked deftly. She closed in the rents and then darned the raveled places with bits of the thread ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... of a round plump figure; he wore a little imperial and sharp, inquisitive moustaches; his hair was light brown and he was immensely proud of it. In Petrograd he was always very smartly dressed. He bought his clothes in London and his plump hands had a movement familiar to all his friends, a flicker of his hands to his coat, his waistcoat, his trousers, to brush off some imaginary speck of dust. It was obvious now that he had given very much thought to his uniform. It fitted him perfectly, his epaulettes ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... his commands by some strong theological terms. "Padre, that word must never be used out here." "Well," I said, "this is the first war I have ever been at, and if I can arrange matters it is the last, but I promise you I will never use it again." Not the least flicker of a smile passed over his face. Of course, as time went on and I advanced in military knowledge, I came to know the way in which my question ought to have been phrased. Instead of saying, "Is this a general retreat?", I ought to have said, "Are we straightening ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... her warm breath about my neck as she stooped over me to tie that rope, that love was really revealed to me; it was then, and not till then, that all my previous love for Winifred seemed as the flicker of a rushlight to Salaman's cloak of fire; and a feeling of bliss unutterable came upon me, and the night air seemed full of music, and the sky above seemed opening, as she whispered, 'Henry, Henry, Henry, in a few minutes you will be mine.' But ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... be in the middle of the night, though it was in fact on the edge of daybreak, that he was awakened by some one knocking softly at his door. He lighted a match, and by its momentary flicker saw Mr. Denham standing on ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... in the conflict with her uncle she had exulted in the idea that suicide was always in her power; now she trembled at the thought of death, at the thought of everything contained in the unlovely future. She did not want to die, to flicker out in nothingness, never to smile and never to laugh again. Why should she not be happy—rightly happy? Was she not a Cornelian, a Claudian, born to a position that a princess might enjoy? Was not wealth hers, and a fair degree ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... time, however, he could plainly perceive the flicker of torches moving about the wharves and piers of Chhung-ju, and presently a few of those same lights appeared on the bosom of the river. The rebels had evidently rowed out in small boats, and were towing the barges left anchored in mid-stream to the shore. A moment before a sharp bend in the ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... frighten you," he replied, smiling at her fondly. "But I had rapped on the fence twice. I suppose you took me for a flicker. Or you were too busy with your gardening to hear me. Or, may be you were too deep in ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... the dark garden. Max had retreated to the empty fireplace, finding the bricks cooler than the carpeted floor. All was very still, save when the emphatic sweep of a trump card made the candle flames flicker. But the deals were a diversion. Then the rector, who had tiptoed about, to look over the shoulder of each player, might say, "You didn't answer Miss Ruth's call, Denner;" or, "Bless my soul, Dale, what made you play a ten-spot on that second hand round? You ought ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... Philip from obligations to his late ally. It was now the surrender of his fortresses and his artillery that he could not stomach, and the victory of Drakenberg raised his once martial ardor to a final flicker. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 9 • Various
... missionary by the sight that he turned and said: "Why do you not go somewhere and be treated." There flashed instantly in the boy's eye a hope that had long since died, and he quickly inquired, "Where can I go?" The missionary could not tell him, and I watched the last ray of hope flicker for a second and then die out forever! Ever since that day I have been hearing that pathetic question, "Where can I go?" I seem to hear all Latin-Americans ask it out of depths of sin. And we know to whom they must go for healing and salvation. Shall we tell them? "Lord to whom shall we ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... go, let us go! I don't like the flicker of these candles," she murmured, and she ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... swingle, swuff, Flicker, flacker, fling, fluff! Thus we go, To and fro; Here and there, Everywhere, Born and ...
— Cross Purposes and The Shadows • George MacDonald
... hesitated. Then Margot came with the candle, and as it guttered, the flame threw distorted shadows; at one moment lighting up a dark spot with a sudden flash, and then sending queer, erratic reflections chasing across the oak panelling. Then a flicker displayed the unmade bed on which Margot had ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... spread them across the sky to beckon the public to his great new department store on Sixth Avenue. Just as at the beginning of the gesture you saw only the tips of the fingers, so Peter Rolls, Sr., had begun with a tiny flicker, the first groping of his inspiration feeling its way ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... flicker of the Wyandotte's eyes which seemed to include everybody before him, then he said very coolly that he had seen no riffle that might indicate shallow water, but that there was a ford not far below, and we ought ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... as he stood there, with his eyes fixed on the planks, trying to discover an aperture, that between the cracks of the boards there glimmered a faint light. It seemed to flicker, then it ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... starlight, however; a dim red glow began to flicker on the shapes which rushed behind him in his flight. Wheeling once, he saw two broad flames leaping high in wild and splendid rivalry,—one from Heywood's house, one from the club. He caught also a whirling impression of many heads and arms, far off, tiny, black, ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... an instant. There wasn't a flicker of an eyelash to show that Ralph was the least bit nervous. The experiences of the last few ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... twinkling lights, here and there disclosing momentary peeps of that picturesque old town, peeps that conjure forth visions of half forgotten stories of that place of many memories, told, in the jungle by the flicker of the camp fire, by Malays, adepts at relating tales handed ...
— From Jungle to Java - The Trivial Impressions of a Short Excursion to Netherlands India • Arthur Keyser
... Madeline Spencer, lowering her revolver as the final flicker of the flame expired, "I am ready to submit ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... to bed; and when she kissed President's cheek, I saw aversion written in every line of her shrinking figure. Yet opposite to him sat Sally, who was a Bland and a Fairfax, and not a tremor, not the flicker of an eyelash, disturbed her friendly and charming expression. What was the secret of that exquisite patience, that perfect courtesy, which was confirmed by the heart, not by the lips? Did the hidden cause of it lie ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... Flicker Film Company, very much at your service," and the man drew a card from his pocket and ...
— Patty and Azalea • Carolyn Wells
... projecting wing bounded on the one side by a wide court. A few steps beyond this archway a narrow corridor cut the passageway, opening up three lanes of shadow. These were lit to a bare visibility by as many tiny lamps hung from the vaulted ceilings, mere specks of points of light too small to flicker, and such as all night long hang before the high altar of a church, symbols of changeless faith burning unquenched even in the deepest darkness of the ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... hair, and suffering Catharine to braid it, and polish it till it looked glossy and soft. Indiana in her turn would adorn Catharine with the wings of the blue-bird or red-bird, the crest of the wood-duck, or quill feathers of the golden-winged flicker, which is called in the Indian tongue the shot-bird, in allusion to the round spots on its cream-coloured breast: [FN: The Golden-winged Flicker belongs to a sub-genus of woodpeckers; it is very handsome, and is said to be eatable; it lives on fruits and insects.] but it was not ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... me not to swim to the shore as the river was falling and the bank caving, but to float with the mattress and call till I was picked up. So I went over with it. But it twisted away from me. I swam to a floating cotton bale, one with a flicker of fire still on it, as it drifted up-stream in the eddy. At the same time I'd heard your uncle and Phyllis strike the water together, and a moment later I saw them—their heads. She was holding to the mattress with one hand and to him with the other. But presently ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... whether driving the winds a-swirl Or a-flicker the subtiler essences polar that whirl In the magnet earth,—yea, thou with a storm for a heart, Rent with debate, many-spotted with question, part From part oft sundered, yet ever a globed light, Yet ever the artist, ever more large and bright Than the eye ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... in despair, he tried to think of other doctors. He thought of telephoning to Jonesboro. Just as he decided he must turn away there came a stirring in the dead house, a flicker of light appeared on the inside now here, now there; it steadied into a tiny beam and approached the door. The door opened, and Dr. Jallup's head and breast appeared, illuminated against ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... over the throng. Scurrying figures on the field announced that the expected was being carried out. Chester was making a last desperate effort for a touchdown. It would be the expiring flicker of the flame; for whether successful or not it must mark the end, since the referee would be blowing his whistle before ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... revealed, that expression disappeared; and when he added a super-power stage by cutting in a heavy-duty transformer and a five-kilowatt transmitting tube, Seaton thought that he saw an instantaneously suppressed flicker of doubt ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... its blare and hubbub burst on him, and its torch-light and many twinkling candles. He proceeded beside the triple row of Indian lodges which occupied the entire water-front. At intervals, on the very verge, evening fires were built, throwing streamers of crimson flicker on the lake. Naked pappooses gathered around these at play. But on an open flat betwixt encampment and village rose a lighted tabernacle of blankets stretched on poles and uprights; and within this the adult Indians were crowded, celebrating the orgy of the medicine-dance. ...
— The Cobbler In The Devil's Kitchen - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... he saw was the princess. She sat on an oriental divan. Her hands were folded; she sat very erect; her chin was tilted ominously; there was so little expression on her pale face that she might have been an incomplete statue. But Max was almost certain that there was just the faintest flicker of a smile in her eyes as she saw him enter. Glorious eyes! (It is a bad sign when a man begins to ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... loved him, that she might wash his wounds with her tears, and dry his damp brow with her glorious hair. Wide-eyed and silent, as the train came near, she moved along by the moat to meet the procession at the drawbridge, not understanding yet, but not letting one movement of the men, one flicker of the lights, one quaver of the deep chant, escape her reeling senses. Then all at once she was aware that Gilbert walked bareheaded before the bier, half wrapped in a long black cloak that swept the greensward behind him. As she turned the last bastion before reaching ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... hornet turned it over and over impatiently, to see if anything more was to be got out of it; then she spurned it aside, and bounced into the air with a deep hum. She had certainly been very amusing, but the Child drew a breath of relief when she was gone. He had caught the copper-red flicker of her sting, as it barely touched the victim, and it seemed to him like a jet of ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... absolute sin to put ourselves into a condition that makes others miserable. It is also wretched economy to burn the candle at both ends every day. When it is needed to aid us in some large piece of work the wick will be consumed, and the light will faintly flicker, or splutter ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... of shavings or other quick combustible on the platform above. The effect is instantaneous and magical. Suddenly from an obscurity so profound that only the outline of the nearest columns can be faintly discerned by the flicker of a candle, the entire maze of columns flashes into being resplendent and white. The roof and the water send the light back to each other. Not a sound is heard save distant splashes here and there as a bucket descends to ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... little flicker of complacency. The girl was mad. That was the fact of the matter. He got up and began to edge towards the door. Mr. Samuel would be returning shortly, and ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... alone, she would fall to poring over the coloured bas-reliefs on the walls. These were intended to represent various of the powers of Nature under allegorical similitudes, and as nothing can be made that does not belong to the general scheme, she could not fail at least to imagine a flicker of relationship between some of them, and thus a shadow of the reality of things found its way ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... floating city. At midnight there was a cry of alarm passed from ship to ship. The tide was running strong from the westward through the Straits, and sweeping along on its current came eight dark masses, each defined in the night by a red flicker of fire that rose higher and spread wider as the English fireships ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... The man who re-enlists in this Territory must be either drunk or Dutch." And Pike relapsed into gloomy silence again, his eyes fixed upon the faint flicker of the bar lights at Ceralvo's miles away; but Wing only laughed again, and, still puffing away at his pipe, went on down the winding trail to where in the deep shelter of the rocky walls a pool of water lay gleaming. Here he threw himself flat and, laying aside ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... happened there, which, though the flicker of the fire had died down, she could see ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... understand its words, but I know that it tells me of coming disaster, unknown but inevitable, mysterious and inexorable as death. The future is lugubrious as a cemetery full of open graves, ready to receive the dead, with here and there a flicker of pale torches which I can scarce distinguish, and I know not if they are there to lure me on to destruction or to show me ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio |
