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19efd53
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He was not staring at her anymore. He was still. He had gone. The moment of truth had vanished forever, and she would never know. What had happened was Then, was already past, in some other dimension of time, and the present was Now, part of a future he could not share. This present, this future, was all blank to him, like the empty spaces in the photograph album beside the bed, waiting to be filled. Even, she thought, if he had read my min..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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24ebbf9
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Had I known, that last hour sitting there, talking and laughing about trivial things, that there was a clot forming like a time bomb close to his heart, ready to explode, I would surely have behaved differently, held on to him, at least thanked him for all my nineteen years of happiness and love. Not flipped over the photographs in the album, mocking bygone fashions, nor yawned halfway through, so that, sensing boredom, he let the album dro..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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b1cc5ec
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reader is back in the
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Daphne du Maurier |
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3a0d04d
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Dogs that had been his which she had not known. "There's dear old Punch..." (Punch, he used to tell her, always knew when his ship was due home, and waited at an upstairs window.) Naval officers riding donkeys... playing tennis... running races, all this before the war, and it had made her think, "unconscious of their doom, the little victims play," because on the next page it became suddenly sad, the ship he had loved blown up, and so many..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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2e81aba
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Friendship and duty are two separate things," he said, "and I put duty first. You are another generation, you wouldn't understand."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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5d2f991
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I am probably a dull man. Emotionally I have had no complications. I was engaged to a pretty girl, a neighbor, when I was twenty-five, but she married somebody else. It hurt at the time, but the wound healed in less than a year. One fault, if fault it is, I have always had, which perhaps accounts for my hitherto monotonous life. This is an aversion to becoming involved with people. Friends I possess, but at a distance. Once involved, troubl..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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74db045
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Fine," I answered. "Now what about a drink?" I followed him up the corridor once more, across the entrance hall, and on through a swing door at the far end. I heard the light clack-clack of ping-pong balls, and braced myself for frivolity. The room we entered was empty. The sportsmen, whoever they were, were playing in the room beyond. Here there were easy chairs, a table or two, an electric fire and a bar in the far corner, behind which my..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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9565316
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And so," the Colonel was saying, "the Mandate was handed over to the U.N. in May, and we were all out of the country by July 1st. To my mind we should have stayed. The whole thing has been a bloody nonsense ever since. No one will ever settle down in this part of the world, and they'll still be fighting over Jerusalem when you and I have been in our graves for years. Beautiful spot, you know, from this distance. Used to be pretty scruffy in..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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eaab88d
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But you know the old saying? Out of sight, out of mind. If people aren't there to be talked about the talk dies. It's the way of the world.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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000a666
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The art of provocation was unknown to me, and I would sit with his map upon my lap, the wind blowing my dull, lanky hair, happy in his silence yet eager for his words.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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b0e11c0
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Inn
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Daphne du Maurier |
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6f002eb
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Whether he talked or not made little difference to my mood. My only enemy was the clock on the dash-board, whose hands would move relentlessly to one o'clock.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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3e6ae8f
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She had beauty that endured, and a smile that was not forgotten. Somewhere her voice still lingered, and the memory of her words.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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e9818e3
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kazhetsia, sushchestvuet teoriia, chto stradaniia oblagorazhivaiut liudei, delaiut ikh sil'nee i, chtoby shagnut' vperiod, my dolzhny proiti iskus ogniom. Etogo nam dostalos' s likhvoi, kak ni ironicheski zvuchat moi slova. Oba my uznali, chto takoe strakh, i odinochestvo, i dushevnaia muka. Ia dumaiu, v zhizni kazhdogo cheloveka rano ili pozdno nastupaet ispytanie. U vsekh nas est' sobstvennyi d'iavol-muchitel', kotoryi ezdit na nas verkho..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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a83f463
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love was a thing of such simplicity once it was shared, and admitted, and done, with all the joy intensified and all the fever gone
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Daphne du Maurier |
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b77e0b3
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But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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a0e5101
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All this, is only momentary, is only a fragment in time that will never come again, for yesterday already belongs to the past and is ours no longer, and tomorrow is an unknown thing that may be hostile. This is our day, our moment, the sun belongs to us, and the wind, and the sea, and the men forward there singing on the deck. This day is forever a day to be held and cherished, because in it we shall have lived and loved, and nothing else m..
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frenchman-s-creek
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Daphne du Maurier |
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eb2b9e2
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How young and inexperienced I must have seemed, and how I felt it, too. One was too sensitive, too raw, there were thorns and pin-pricks in so many words that in reality fell lightly on air.
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youth
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Daphne du Maurier |
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598d958
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I'll not bide in Heaven, nor rest here in my grave. My spirit will linger with the ones I love--an' when they're sorrowful and feared in themselves, I'll come to them; and God Himself won't keep me.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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72c1b8d
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Men are simpler than you imagine, my sweet child. But what goes on in the twisted tortuous minds of women would baffle anyone.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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738ef6d
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Though Thomas liked to think he had his own way over things, it was generally Janet who had the last say in the matter. She would fling a word at her husband and no more, and he would go off to his work with an uneasy feeling at the back of his mind that she had won. He called it "giving in to Janie," but it was more than that, it was unconscious subservience to a quieter but stronger personality than his own."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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a6847d2
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I don't think there is any necessity to bring Inspector Welch into the affair - yet," said Colonel Julyan. His voice was different, harsher. I did not like the way he used the word, "yet." Why must he use it at all? I did not like it."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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8644d31
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It's funny, I thought, how the routine of life goes on, whatever happens; we do the same things, go through the little performance of eating, sleeping, washing. No crisis can break through the crust of habit.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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597a536
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I found this hardly comforting, and wondered if there was not some virtue in the quality of insincerity.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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66327b5
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How alive was her writing though, how full of force. Those curious, sloping letters.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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aa09bd9
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Does forty-two seem very old to you?" he said."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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447afa7
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I wondered if it was the same in every home, this feeling of exuberance when visitors had gone.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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6853e3c
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Make the drummer announce me," I whispered, "make him beat the drum, you know how they do, and then call out Miss Caroline de Winter. I want to surprise them below."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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12ac41b
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Laime nera koks turtas, kuri galima ikainoti, tai tam tikra minties kokybe, mastymo busena.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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cef7eac
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I love the stillness of a room after a party. The chairs are moved, the cushions disarranged, everything is there to show that people enjoyed themselves; and one comes back to the empty room happy that it's over, happy to relax and say, 'Now we are alone again.' Ambrose used to say to me in Florence that it was worth the tedium of visitors to experience the pleasure of their going. He was so right.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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505f184
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Pierre and I refused to allow my mother to visit her son in prison. She remained in the house with Cathie and little Jacques, but we went ourselves, and I felt as if I were back again in the theater foyer... My brother was still the perfect dandy, dressed as though for a reception, with a clean shirt and neckerchief brought to him every day by one of his servers from the boutique in the Palais-Royal, along with wine and provisions, which he..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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1ea56eb
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The months of anxiety had taken their toll of my mother, with the journeys backwards and forwards to Paris which had continued during the summer. She had never cared for the capital; and now, she told us, she had no desire to set foot in it again.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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6fd448a
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You look very pretty," said my mother at last, opening the conversation. "And how do you like being the wife of a master glass-maker here at Rougemont?" "Well enough," replied Cathie, "but I find it rather fatiguing." "No doubt," said my mother, "and a great responsibility. How many workmen are employed here, and how many of them are married with families?" Cathie opened large eyes. "I have no idea," she said. "I have never spoken to any of..
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Daphne du Maurier |
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6dde5a7
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She is like a child playing at houses," whispered my mother. "What I ask myself is this--where will it all end?"
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Daphne du Maurier |
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8373f12
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He leaned over the rail and stared down into the Pool with interest. It was certainly not much of a place, the water dark and rather slimy, the steps slippery-looking too. Grandfather must be right, and it formed part of the city drain. The man who had been lame for thirty-eight years was lucky when Jesus came along and healed him instantly, rather than waiting for someone to lift him into the Pool. Perhaps Jesus realized the water was bad...
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Daphne du Maurier |
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23af8da
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Perhaps," thought Robin, "the soldiers didn't actually mock Jesus at all. It was just a game, which they let him join in. He might even have thrown dice with them. The crown and the purple robe were just dressing-up. It was the Romans' idea of fun. I don't believe when a prisoner is condemned to death the people guarding him are beastly. They try and make the time go quickly, because they feel sorry for him."
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Daphne du Maurier |
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b76783d
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I thought at first somebody was dead, but after a while I saw it was just England.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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62a4beb
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I was seized with a sudden desire to laugh, to cry, to do both, and I had a pain, too, at the pit of my stomach. I wished, for one wild moment, that none of this had happened, that I was alone somewhere, going for a walk, and whistling.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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95b9408
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If you think I'm one of the people who try to be funny at breakfast you're wrong.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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4662c7b
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We were dreamers, both of us, unpractical, reserved, full of great theories never put to test, and, like all dreamers, asleep to the waking world. Disliking our fellow men, we craved affection; but shyness kept impulse dormant until the heart was touched.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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ffc54ea
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We mounted the carriole and drove up the hill from l'Antiniere onto the road. Looking back, we saw grandmother and grandson standing there hand in hand waving to us, and it was as though they represented all that was steadfast and enduring in past and future, while our own generation--Robert's and mine--lacked stability, and was at the mercy of events which might prove too strong for all of us.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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06102b9
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What trail of thought, confused and indirect, drove through those minds of theirs, to cloud their judgement? What waves of impulse swept about their being, moving them to anger and withdrawal, or else to sudden generosity? We were surely different, with our blunter comprehension, moving more slowly to the compass points, while they, erratic and unstable, were blown about their course by winds of fancy.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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868a817
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I thought how little we know about the feelings of old people. Children we understand, their fears and hopes and make-believe. I was a child yesterday. I had not forgotten.
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Daphne du Maurier |
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aadcaec
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My own grief has no part in this story. Many women lose their first child. My mother, in the days before I was born, lost two within as many years. I had seen it happen twice to Cathie, and with the last she herself went as well. Men call us the weaker sex. Perhaps it's true. Yet to carry life within us as we do, to feel it bud and flower and come from us fully formed as a living creature, separate though part of ourselves, and watch it fad..
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Daphne du Maurier |