"Tenseness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had told her gently, almost in the middle of a kiss, that he loved her, and she had smiled and held him closer and murmured, "I'm glad," looking into his eyes. There had been a new quality in her attitude, a new growth of sheer physical attraction toward him and a strange emotional tenseness, that was enough to make him clinch his hands and draw in his breath at the recollection. He had felt nearer to her than ever before. In a rare delight he cried aloud to the room that ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... wounded men became the center of attraction and related for the hundredth time their sensations when the juramentado had struck them down. They were not seriously wounded, but the cruel cuts were displayed, and they did not prove an antidote to the tenseness of the situation. ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... seemed unaware of a certain tenseness in the attitude of both Desire and John, a symptom which might have suggested many things ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... exactly for the purpose of doing away with the irresponsible regime, while the Conference, by a formal vote, rejected a coalition with the Cadets. At several meetings of the Democratic Soviet which took place prior to the Revolution, there prevailed an atmosphere of tenseness and utter incapacity for action. The Soviet did not reflect the Revolution's march forward but the dissolution of the parties that ...
— From October to Brest-Litovsk • Leon Trotzky
... gave a tenseness to the atmosphere, as if it were charged with the electricity of a coming storm, a tingling waiting which made the men prone to become silent and then talk again in fitful outbursts. Or it might be said that it was like a glass full of precipitate which only waits for the injection of a ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... be performed (Figs. 33 and 34). If a mother is anxiously watching the course of a serious illness of her child and if, in caring for it, she is stimulated to the utmost to perform motor acts, she will continue in a state of motor tenseness until the child recovers or dies. If relief is sudden, as in the crisis of pneumonia, and the mother is not exhausted, she will easily laugh if tired, she may cry. If death occurs, the stimulus to motor acts is suddenly withdrawn and she then cries aloud, ...
— The Origin and Nature of Emotions • George W. Crile
... except for the tenseness of it, and for the incessant watchfulness which Margaret and I alone maintain, it is more like a mild adventure, more like a page out of some book ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the Senior Surgeon reconsidered his phrasing. "'General Heartwork for a Family of Two'? U—m—m." Quite abruptly even the tenseness of his manner faded from him, leaving his face astonishingly quiet, astonishingly gentle. "But how else, Miss Malgregor," he queried, "How else should a widower with a child proffer marriage to a—to a young girl like yourself? Even under conditions directly ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... becomes erect, hard, and of diminished size during its action; the motion is plainly of the same nature as that of the muscles when they contract in the line of their sinews and fibres; for the muscles, when in action, acquire vigor and tenseness, and from soft become hard, prominent, and thickened: and in the ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... something of tenseness in the small face framed by the red hair. Anne touched Marie-Louise's cheek with a tender finger. "Dear heart," she said, "he is just ...
— Mistress Anne • Temple Bailey
... yellow light of the oil lamp on the Commandants desk fell on the military faces, figures and trappings of the men in the room. The shuffling tramp of soldiers in the dark street below died away in the direction of the river. I felt the military tenseness of the scene. I realised that I was inside the German lines on a bluff that was succeeding but might ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... Courtland as she heard his voice, strong, beseeching, tender, intimate with God! She lay listening, watching his illumined face as he prayed. Watched and listened as one who suddenly sees a ray of light where all was darkness; till gradually the tenseness and pain faded from her face and a surprised calm ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... reached down lovingly, and patted the dog, sitting in a rigid attitude of expectancy by his side. As the child turned the light of his countenance on those adoring dog eyes, the animal broke from his tenseness into a wriggling fever ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... readers, this tenseness of language, this violence of judgement, and this occasional unclean handling of the unclean, make Juvenal an exhausting and a depressing poet to read in any large quantity at a time. Worse still, they lead the reader at times to harbour doubts as to the genuineness of Juvenal's indignation. ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... feeling around slowly, deposited his angular bulk with care upon the little chair. "My name"—in the tenseness of the dark the words seemed to carry added ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... narrow prejudices. I did not avert my gaze from Alice. I went on talking with ingratiating softness, the recollection that, most likely, she had never before been spoken to by a strange man adding to my assurance. I don't know why an emotional tenseness should have crept into the situation. But it did. And just as I was becoming aware of it a slight scream cut short my flow ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... with a surging tenseness, that this fateful thing was sliding over into his hands to work out, his and Banner's. He knew full well that he and Banner both were like to be slated for an early death, but he did not care. In Corvan, night had fallen ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... the erring Teddy, if not as reasonable, at any rate as one way of looking at it. He delivered the speech in an injured tone and shuffled off. The atmosphere of tenseness was unmistakable now. Sally could feel it. The world of the theatre is simply a large nursery and its inhabitants children who readily become fretful if anything goes wrong. The waiting and the uncertainty, the loafing about in strange ...
— The Adventures of Sally • P. G. Wodehouse
... only comparatively recently that the consciousness has begun to form among the workers of the soil that it is possible for them to change their lot. As everywhere else, Russia has been the beacon-flare. Since 1918 an extraordinary tenseness has come over the lives of the frugal sinewy peasants who, through centuries of oppression and starvation, have kept, in spite of almost complete illiteracy, a curiously vivid sense of personal independence. In the backs of taverns ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... beside me, and three other passengers, not to mention the chauffeur, it was with a tenseness of the nerves that I drove through the labyrinth, and I was glad to clear Muiden. Next came Naarden—that tragic Naarden whose capture and sack by the Spaniards encouraged Alva to attack Haarlem; and then, without ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... he watched each night for the frail-looking little girl who liked the picture of the pines. She would always come hurrying across the street in the same eager way, an eagerness close to the feverish. But the tenseness would always relax as she saw the picture. "She never looks quite so wilted down when she goes away as she does when she comes," the old man saw. "Upon my soul, I believe she really goes there. It's—oh, ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... Seemann, Max Alvary. The interesting character of the occurrence was fully appreciated by the public, and the drama was seen and heard by a remarkable assembly. The last seat had been sold four days before, and the vast audience room was crowded in every portion. The tenseness of the attention was almost painful, and the effect of Herr Niemann's acting in the climax of the third act was so vivid that an experienced actress who sat in a baignoir at my elbow grew faint and almost swooned. At the request of Mr. Stanton, or Mr. Seidl, he never ventured ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... courtliness he could muster, and releasing his passive prisoner, pushed her gently into the safe-keeping of the old cniht. Yet he was not so obtuse as to step back, as though the incident were closed; he read the King's inflection more correctly than that. Holding himself somewhat stiff in the tenseness of his feelings, he stood his ground ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... all. The chirography was the same as that upon the note of the racing-car episode. Shirley locked up the missive in his cabinet, and smiled at the increasing tenseness ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... some one to speak. And Holley came a step forward. His face was haggard, but its white tenseness was gone. He seemed as if he were reluctant to speak, to inflict ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... creation lay in tense expectancy. The usual occupations were suspended. Speech became low and constrained. Songs ended abruptly, and laughter ceased. There were no audible sobs, neither sighing. Bird and beast were stilled, as if the end had come, and nothing more mattered. Then, in a little while, the tenseness relaxed, and everything went on as before, though much subdued. The righteous in the Paradise of God quietly gathered themselves together in their usual places of worship. They clasped each other's hands, and looked with ...
— Added Upon - A Story • Nephi Anderson
... standing in front of the restaurant, but he was faced in the other direction. His flat, muscular back was rigid. In his attitude was a certain tenseness, as though his body was a bundle of steel springs ready ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... quickly and looked over his shoulder. Across the uneven ground, straight towards them, came the figure of Mrs. Pember. The tenseness of her expression had further yielded to resolution, which had in turn taken on a stolidity which declared itself unassailable. No one of the three spoke as she seated herself on a bit of timber near them, and, folding her hands, waited with the immobility and the apparent impartiality ...
— A Christmas Accident and Other Stories • Annie Eliot Trumbull
... theater, compelling. Once you are within the radius of Double Door you will remain transfixed until you know what's behind it." Bernard Sobel, Daily Mirror. "Double Door is a thriller of a new kind, beautifully written, superbly played, clean as a whistle, and arousing in its spectators a tenseness of interest I have rarely seen equaled in a playhouse." E. Jordan, America. Leading part acted by Mary Morris in America and by Sybil Thorndike in London. A play that will challenge the best acting talent of ...
— Why the Chimes Rang: A Play in One Act • Elizabeth Apthorp McFadden
... work draws to a close, and it is time. I feel a tenseness within my brain, a sense of intolerable strain, which warns me that something must give. I have worked myself to the limit. But tonight should be the last night. With a supreme effort I should finish the final ledger and complete the case before I rise ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of 1912, however, there was a greater tenseness, a sharpening of the struggle which once more roused Vivie to keen interest. When she returned from an autumn visit to Villa Beau-sejour she found there had been a split between the "Peths" and the "Panks." The Girondist section of the women suffragists had ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... certain earnestness in his speech that told her he meant what he said. He sat with his back to a rock, smoking a cigarette. His attitude was one of repose, but in the strong light his dark face showed a tenseness that did not ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... 'phone on this fateful morning, away from the hurly-burly world outside, clad only in my pajamas, and listened to this discussion, the tenseness of the whole situation and its grave possibilities of war with all its tragedy gripped me. Here were three men quietly gathered about a 'phone, pacifists at heart, men who had been criticized and lampooned throughout the whole country as being anti-militarist, ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... German flag arrived. Before it came, two soldiers exhibited a German frontier post in front of a cafe on the boulevard, which started the excitement, but the reception of the flag by the Government and its placement in the Invalides, where is Napoleon's tomb, was an hour of dramatic tenseness. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... expression leading her to active settlement work in the slums. Blindly treading her sweet way, she set in motion forces whose action and reaction on her and on Hartley Taine is herein told with a repression admirable in its resultant heart-grip and dramatic tenseness. ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... there like one who sought some hidden treasure, knowing which door it lay behind but stricken with fear lest some unseen Cerberus might be crouching in wait for the rash seeker after happiness. Oh! Aunt Jennie! The tenseness of that moment! The feeling that, like the Snowbird a few days ago, I was moving through a fog-hidden world ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... would have brushed her aside and opened it, but her quiet face held him. The tenseness was fading out of it. He saw her lips tremble, and then a miracle happened. In her wide-open, beautiful eyes tears were gathering. Even then she did not lower her glance or bury her face in her hands, ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... give me as many pieces as you like. They're always good medicine," he assured her. But he kept his head bent so that his hat quite hid his face from her. "What about?" he asked, a betraying tenseness ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... knowledge of the sea, for he obeyed at once, and the boat, set free, lurched forward with a flap of her sail, which was like the report of a cannon. For a moment, all seemed confusion and flapping chaos, then came a sense of tenseness, and the boat heeled over with a swish, which added a hundred-weight of solid water to the beating of the hail on the spare sail, beneath which the ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... suddenly felt a tenseness and nervousness. She walked out of her room and paused a moment outside the closed door of the sitting-room ...
— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners
... upon them with her usual briskness. If Susan was more silent than usual, and if her eyes sought Keith's face more frequently than was her habit, no one, apparently, noticed it. Susan did fancy, however, that she saw a new tenseness in Keith's face, a new nervousness in his manner; but that, perhaps, was because she was watching him so closely, and because he was so constantly in her mind, owing to her apprehension as to how he would take the news of ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... He therefore set his jaw firmly and made its upper angles jut sharply through his clean-shaven cheeks. It was well that Miss Shirley had some beauty to spare, too, for Verrian had scarcely enough for himself. Such distinction as he had was from a sort of intellectual tenseness which showed rather in the gaunt forms of his face than in the gray eyes, heavily lashed above and below, and looking serious but dull with their rank, black brows. He was chewing a cud of bitterness in the accusal he made himself of having forced Miss Shirley to ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... The tenseness of his voice seemed to scare the sailor, "No, sir, no, sir, no, sir!" repeated the cockney ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... had arranged any such thing?" Mary asked. Now the tenseness in her manner got the husband's attention, and he replied with a sudden gravity, apprehensive of ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... feet and pushed a chair to the bed. He mounted it and his face was close to the dead woman's. Alas! it was not peaceful. It was stamped with the tragedy of a bitter renunciation. After all, she had been young, and at the last had died unwillingly. There was still a fierce tenseness about the nostrils, and her upper lip was curled as if her last word had been an imprecation. But she was very beautiful, despite the emaciation of her features. Her black hair nearly covered the bed, and her lashes looked too heavy for ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... strange interruption left a jarring note behind it, and to ease the tenseness the older man stepped forward and, taking from a rack near by one of several glass tubes filled with yellow liquid, held it up ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... that they were going to put Robertson out of the game and threats had been freely uttered that before the game had been going very long he "would be in the hospital." This news added to the tenseness of feeling. If Robertson should be put out of the game, or if he should lose his temper the chances of a victory for Bliss were slim indeed, for rarely had two teams been so evenly matched in skill and brain ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... the table and went to his room without saying a word. She would sit perfectly still and listen; she was frightened when he went to the piano to try a motif. When he again entered her room, she looked into his face with the tenseness of a soul in utter anguish. Then it suddenly came about that he would sit down by her side and caress her. He told her all about his life, his home, his father, his mother. If she could only have heard each of his words twice! If she could only have drunk in the expression ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... the sky, big Bryan Moloney stood directing the work. He had gone at the job on the bias of indirection, picking out a passage at either side that the center might the more easily "pull." He knew by the tenseness of the log he stood on that, behind the jam, power had gathered sufficient to push the whole tangle down-stream. Now he was offering ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... him, there in the moonlight with the jungle moving about its business of life and death about them. And very, very slowly the tenseness left her figure. And very, very slowly ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... Gradually the tenseness, the dry, racking, tearing quality of Ruth's sobs, softened, ameliorated. Presently she was crying, quietly, pitifully.... Hilda breathed with relief. She did not know that for an hour Ruth had sat on the edge of her bed, still, tearless, staring blindly before her—her soul drying ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... he sat long at his big oaken table, his brows drawn thoughtfully, his eyes narrowed in deep speculation. The tenseness of the man's still figure, the gleam of the darkening eyes, the obvious moody abstraction told that some vital question had come to him for its answer, that he was fighting it out sternly, that the issue was one of those great issues of life ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... fleet itself there was a brisk tenseness as it sped away from the land. Vesuvius still loomed high, but the city dwindled to a mere blinking mass of white specks which were its buildings. The sea was aglitter with sunlight reflected from the waves. There was ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... pride and passion left him. His face lost its rigid tenseness, his eyes grew moist. He forgave Castrani's insults, because he told him Margaret was pure. He put out his hands, and grasped those of ...
— The Fatal Glove • Clara Augusta Jones Trask
... Dicky must have read my thoughts in my face, for, after a moment, he said gently, yet with a tenseness which told me he was putting a ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... happening to the cook. The tenseness had gone from his usually wiry little body; his eyes were milder; a curve was softening his mouth. Kneeling before the child, he held forth ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... A tremendous tenseness fell on the world. Bobby's muscles stiffened to the point of aching. The limited vista bounded on right and left by the sidewise movement of his eyeballs, and above by the brim of his cap contained nothing. He did not dare extend ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... thought that perhaps if we went on like this long enough, I might forget a little of the past and look forward only to the future. Some day I meant to tell you. You know that, Peter. You know I would n't be dishonest with you." She was talking hysterically, anxious only to relieve the tenseness of his lips. She was not sure that he heard her at all. He was looking at her, but with curious detachment, as if ...
— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... best to be a pleasant guest. She had somehow to break the tenseness in the room and she called on her reserve of anecdote. She told the story of Mr. Jenkins trying to fetch his boots and catch a glimpse of Mrs. Banks's daily help who could cook but had no character; she described the ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... to everybody?" Dasinger asked Egavine. There was an air of tenseness about the little group he didn't like, though tension might be understandable enough under ...
— The Star Hyacinths • James H. Schmitz
... voice changed from harsh tenseness to contriteness. "I'm sorry, Miss Ryan, but I feel it inadvisable to discuss it just now. All I can say is that full quarantine measures are now in force as of fifteen minutes ago. There will be no landing or taking off from Earth until ...
— Unthinkable • Roger Phillips Graham
... nursing the motor along, Johnny could tell by his slight movements. It seemed to him that a tenseness had crept into the set of Bland's head. Johnny braced himself for something—just what, he did not know. His knowledge of motors was superficial. Something was wrong with the ignition, he guessed, but he had no idea what it ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... Miss Pritchard now," remarked Mrs. Moss, thankful to have the tenseness relieved. And, in truth, Kate, who was suspiciously near the front door, ushered ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... this in a very ruffled state. It sounded sincere enough, however, despite all he had done. There was a tenseness in Hurstwood's voice and manner which could but have some effect. She did not want anything to do with him. He was married, he had deceived her once, and now again, and she thought him terrible. Still there is something in such daring and power which is fascinating to a woman, especially ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... Something, perhaps the tenseness which had gripped the spirits of all on board and affected even him, prompted him to pause for a moment's chat with Tom. He leaned against the rail in the black solitude, his easy manner in strange contrast to the portentous darkness and rising wind, and the ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... he certainly had magnificent nerve. I almost decided he was above suspicion. But his nonchalance, his air of finality, his authoritative assurance—these to my keen and practiced eyes were in significant contrast to a certain tenseness of line about his mouth and a slow paling of his ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... be a tenseness to the atmosphere of the old store. Louise saw the usual idlers gathered about the cold stove—Washy Gallup on his nail-keg, his jaw wagging eagerly; Milt Baker and Amiel Perdue side by side with their elbows on the counter; ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... realized his failure. The tenseness went out of him. He spoke calmly. "Yes, I wanted to die. I no longer possess anything. I lied, Boris; but it is useless to tell you that. I knew nothing of Anna until it was too late. I ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... were told something of the impending attack—the first public mention of it, though more than one had guessed something unusual was in the air from the tenseness of ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... comparatively easy to stand in the breach, making her soft note of deprecation, acknowledging playfully that the stress of so-called "normal" life must indeed seem a burden to one who had hitherto talked with flowers, played with shadows. Berber, however, seemed hardly to hear her; there was no tenseness in the youth's bearing; he merely gazed thoughtfully past her ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... notice it, and indeed a far keener observer than the slow-witted old butler might have failed to see the sudden gleam which shot up in the grey eyes behind the heavy spectacles, might have failed to notice the tightening of the lips beneath the blond moustache, or the tenseness of the slight frame under the assumed embonpoint. Muller's every nerve was tingling, but he had himself completely ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... her in his arms and kissed her, but she proved a passive sweetheart. There was no tenseness in her body, her arms did not go around him, and her lips met his without ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... A new tenseness seemed to have crept into the situation. The conversation, never without its emotional tendencies, at once changed its character. Philippa, cold and reserved, with a threat lurking all the time in her tone and manner, ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of the foot unclothed. This style is particularly good during the maternity days. Painful feet are a great strain upon the general nervous system. Who of us has not seen women with strained, tense faces hobbling about in high-heeled, narrow-toed shoes? And if we followed them we would not only see tenseness and strain in the features of the face, but could hear outbursts of temper on the least provocation. Aching feet produce general irritability. If ease of body and calmness of spirit is desired, wear shoes that are comfortable, and the surprising part of it is that ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... Jess, and Peggy, who with Diana were squatting near the schoolroom fire in the gloaming, moved a little nearer together. There is comfort in physical contact. The fact that Brother Lawrence was entirely an invention of Diana's did not relieve the tenseness of the situation; she had talked about him so often that she seemed to have conjured him up. They could almost see his white habit gliding along the corridor, and his unsaintly eyes gleaming from under his cowl. They began to wish he had behaved better during his lifetime, or at any rate that ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... is the hero. What an audience the writer of the first romance to star a spectacled hero will have. All over the country thousands of short-sighted men will polish their glasses and plunge into his pages. It is absurd to go on writing in these days for a normal-sighted public. The growing tenseness of life, with its small print, its newspapers read by artificial light, and its flickering motion pictures, is whittling down the section of the populace which has perfect sight to ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... Her chin still rested in her hand, her other arm, long, round, white, lay out upon the table before him. He could see straight into her wide eyes, see the heave of her throat now under its shining circlet, see the color of her cheek, feel the tenseness of all her mind and body as she questioned him ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... mind, of course—no one in France thinks of anything else—but there is none of that silence and tenseness, that emotional tremor, one feels in Paris. The Germans will never come here, one feels, no matter what happens, and as you read the communiques in La Petite Gironde and La Liberte du Sud-Ouest the war seems farther away, I feel pretty ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... find pleasure in individual work, when so many artistic achievements are ready-made for all to enjoy without effort? For—here is the point—an American, the American of today—accustomed to high speed, constant energy, nervous tenseness, the uncertainty, and the fight, cannot cultivate the leisurely German method, the almost scientific and impersonal spirit that informs every profession and branch of art. It is our own way or none for ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... Years of feeling the public pulse through the box-office had not stripped him of a certain shrewd perception of what was fine and what was mean in drama; and he chuckled and wagged his head in the wings as minute by minute the spell of Truda's genius strengthened, till there came that tenseness of silence in the great theatre which few actors live to know, and Truda, vibrant, taut- nerved, and superb, plucked at men's hearts as if they had been harp- strings. It was not till the curtain was down that the spell broke, and then crash upon crash roared the tumultuous applause ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... was finally opened and one by one the dull yellow bars were piled on the scales, there was too much tenseness to allow of even a show of levity. Zephyr had no doubts. No one could have got at the safe while in the river; he could swear to that. From its delivery to the driver by Firmstone there had been no time nor opportunity to tamper ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... a moment, before, had exhibited scenes of quietness, though there was a nervous tenseness on all sides, at once assumed feverish activity. Officers on duty, hearing the cry of the lookout, called to him to repeat his message, which he did, with the added information that the submarine, as evidenced by the appearance of the periscope cutting the water, was approaching ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... moment in his glance. And still Mary looked at the two accountants who completed the triangle by looking at Burdon, as they naturally would, waiting for him to turn and speak to them. As Mary watched them, she became conscious of a change in their manner, a tenseness of interest, such as the two astronomers aforesaid might display at the sight of some disturbance ...
— Mary Minds Her Business • George Weston
... significant milestone on the road of separation. An argument with Beatrice meant one of two outcomes: A violent scene of temper and overwrought nerves with tears as the conquering slacker's weapon or a long, sulky period of tenseness which made him take refuge in his office and ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... wintery snow, thou leaving home at morn and when the noontide hour arouses thee from soothing slumber to face the longsome day? I know not forsure! but is Rumour gone astray with her whisper that thou devourest the well-grown tenseness of a man's middle? So forsure it must be! the ruptured guts of wretched Virro cry it aloud, and thy lips marked with lately-drained ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... whispers, and the listening was now of the same tenseness. Two khaki-clad Sammies stood on the alert in the muddy ditch, dignified by the title, "trench," and tried to pierce the darkness that was like a pall of ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... to the Bank. At my demand we were ushered into the Manager's room, where we were received with a courtesy only too obviously tempered by the suspicion that I had come to suggest an overdraft. On my explaining our errand, however, the Manager's features relaxed their tenseness, and as I wrote the cheque that brought Suzanne's account into a sordid world he even attempted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, March 3rd, 1920 • Various
... was past explaining anything just then. For he had bowed his head in his hands and was sobbing in great, heart-wrung sobs with Doctor Bartholomew's arms about him, sobs that told of the nerve-strain which gave them birth, that told of the tenseness under which he had lived these last weeks. And now the thread had snapped, and all the broken, jangling nerves of the man had been loosed and ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... moss fell squarely on the little fire. He tried to poke it out with his fingers, but his shivering frame made him poke too far, and he disrupted the nucleus of the little fire, the burning grasses and tiny twigs separating and scattering. He tried to poke them together again, but in spite of the tenseness of the effort, his shivering got away with him, and the twigs were hopelessly scattered. Each twig gushed a puff of smoke and went out. The fire-provider had failed. As he looked apathetically about him, his eyes chanced on the dog, sitting ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... in which she pranced along, and partly because Finn had now adopted his usual trailing deportment and exaggerated it a little, owing to his being on a strange trail. He went warily, with hind-quarters carried well under him ready for springing, and that suggestion of tenseness about his whole body which made it actually, as well as apparently, lower to the ground than when he stood erect. As for Warrigal, she trod a home trail, and one in which she was accustomed to meet with deferential treatment from all and sundry. The law of her race prevented a male dingo from attacking ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... The transition from tenseness, self-responsibility, and worry, to equanimity, receptivity, and peace, is the most wonderful of all those shiftings of inner equilibrium, those changes of the personal centre of energy, which I have analyzed so often; ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... hung the pallor of the mist-ridden Flemish morning, deadly quiet, as was usual at that time of the trench day when the tenseness of the all-night vigil was just merging into the ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... dragged on indefinitely. The clouds were blown out of the sky, the moon came out and the stars looked down on the two perplexed people. To relieve the feeling of tenseness that had taken hold of her Clara's mind resorted to a trick. Her eyes sought out a tree or the lights of a farmhouse far ahead and she tried to count the hoof beats of the horse until they had come to it. She wanted to hurry homeward ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... her back was turned to us as she stood gazing across the stream into the depths of the cavern. There was a curious tenseness in her attitude that made me follow her gaze, and what I saw left me with no wonder at it—a huge, black, indistinct form that moved slowly toward ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... moisture squeezed out of the glands during moderate laughter or smiling may aid in giving them lustre; though this must be of altogether subordinate importance, as they become dull from grief, though they are then often moist. Their brightness seems to be chiefly due to their tenseness,[13] owing to the contraction of the orbicular muscles and to the pressure of the raised cheeks. But, according to Dr. Piderit, who has discussed this point more fully than any other writer,[14] the tenseness may be largely attributed ...
— The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals • Charles Darwin
... of herself Jane laughed at that, and Allison breathed more freely now the tenseness was gone out of her voice. His hands ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill |
