"Half-light" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the weird cry, and almost mechanically Tarzan turned his head and answered. A moment later the tawny figure of Sheeta slunk out into the half-light of the beach. There was no moon, but the sky was brilliant with stars. Silently the savage brute came to the side of the man. It had been long since Tarzan had seen his old fighting companion, but the soft purr was sufficient to assure him that the animal ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... dark night. In the half-light Ben was able to see a considerable distance. The height of the opening from the ground was probably not much over twelve feet, as well as the boy could estimate. There would have been no difficulty in his getting out and swinging to the ground, but to this move there were two objections: First, ...
— The Young Explorer • Horatio Alger
... stillness of the closed shop, the strange half-light that came through the drawn shades, her own black dress, recalled her from that swift and cruel hope, and again she set ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... In the half-light jean beheld a lady so different from all he had ever set eyes on till that moment that he could form no notion of what she was, no idea of her beauty or her age. Never had he seen eyes that flashed so vividly ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... the interior wood was enhanced by a bare drip of water from the boughs that stood out straight and tangled I know not how far above me. Its gloom was rendered more tremendous by the half-light and lowering of the sky which the ceiling of branches concealed. Height, stillness, and a sort of expectancy controlled the memories of the place, and I passed silently and lightly between the high columns of the trees ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... darkness has concealed. Their words grew fewer, also, under this strain of waiting, and they gradually fell into the tone that night watchers use, when they speak of mysterious things under the gloomy spell of this sad half-light which is neither night nor day. In the silences between their hesitating words, they bent forward and listened. All was still—there was no distant sound of the attorney-general's return or of the old doctor's coming. ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... after him, listening to the last faint echo of his cries; then he turned slowly and walked through the half-light back to his lonely store. Over to his right, above the horizon the red sun leapt. He did not raise his eyes; but, as he walked, he whispered over and over to himself words which seemed incredible, "And, if it had not been for her, I ...
— Murder Point - A Tale of Keewatin • Coningsby Dawson
... were spotless and the red-tiled floor shone in the half-light. I crossed a neat little kitchen, just as a cuckoo-clock was chiming five, and found myself on the threshold of a small room opening on a garden. Rose was sitting in the wide, ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc
... through the half-light from the hall lamp. "I noticed you did a good deal of running, first and last," he observed. "I suppose you read before you ran—unless you have eyes in the back of your head. Well," he continued, "you can't make me believe that all girls are so anxious to make a good impression, or they ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... swamps and surface water. Time after time our ponies mired and had to be lifted out of the mud. Lush ferns and rank grass made walking dangerous. The trees were interlaced with draping festoons of gray "Spanish moss," forming a canopy overhead which let through only a gloomy half-light. No sounds broke the stillness except the half-awed calls of the men. No birds, not even a squirrel. Then ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... reached Knapfs' door-step. The short winter day was already drawing to its close. In the half-light Von Gerhard's eyes ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... had now brightened; the room was filled with a faint, flickering light. Misty, vaporous, tormenting shadows danced and twisted oddly in the shifting glimmer: in the tenebrous half-light the occupants looked grey, weary, and haggard, their faces strangely distorted by the alternate rise and fall of the shadows. Arkhipov's bald head with its tightly stretched skin resembled a greatly ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... trod its shabby, straggling, ill-paved streets with glory in his face; and walking thus with hat in hand, and face illumined toward the setting sun, folks looked at him strangely and wondered who and what he was, and turned to look again. In that half-light of sunset, he seemed ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... there lay only starlight, as, lantern in hand, he swung down the frozen path. With the opening barn door there came a puff of warm animal breath. As the first rays of light entered, the stock stood up with many a sleepy groan, and bright eyes shining in the half-light swayed back and forth in the narrow stalls, while their owners waited patiently for the ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... the open air a little while, the evening did not seem nearly so dark as we had thought when first peering out from the window of the refectory before making our final exit from the school. Our eyes, probably, became more accustomed to the half-light; but whether or no this was the case, we managed to get down to the harbour as comfortably as if going there ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... light, which changed to green as I looked at it. As the train moved on with increasing speed, the detective counted the carriages, and noted down the number. It was now dark, with the thin crescent of the moon hanging in the western sky throwing a weird half-light on the shining metals. The rear lamps of the train disappeared around a curve, and the signal stood at baleful red again. The black magic of the lonesome night in that strange place impressed me, but the detective was a most practical man. He placed his back against ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... trade, the lord of these latitudes, had not a symptom of the Madeiran monotony of verdure. Behind us towered high the snowy Pilon (Sugar-loaf), whose every wave and fold were picked out by golden sunlight, azure half-light, and purple shade. ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... is another design, printed in imitation of the half-light (abat-jour); this is used principally for a ground, covering the whole surface of the glass, within which (the necessary spaces having been previously cut out before it is stuck on the glass) are placed medallion centres of Watteau figures, perfectly transparent, ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... somewhat dark, and, after the light through which they had just passed, they could not for a few moments discern the objects contained therein. Then, as their eyes became more accustomed to the half-light, they perceived, hanging on the wall, strange instruments of iron and wood, and in different places in the apartment were standing curious-looking machines, the use of which they could only ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... smoking weapon. Then I was up, and, sword in hand, leapt towards his assailant, a tall, bearded man whose corselet flashed red in the fire-glow and who turned to meet my onset, shouting fiercely. And so we fell to it point and point; pushing desperately at each other in the half-light and raving pandemonium about us until more by good fortune than skill I ran him in the arm and shoulder, whereupon, gasping out hoarse maledictions, he incontinent made off into the dark. Then turned ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... abroad. So he looked upon the room. He heard Henry mutter heavily in his sleep as though there was a dark terror upon him; and then, in the light of the dying embers, the Father saw a thing rise upon the hearth, as though it had slept there, and woke to stretch itself. And then in the half-light it seemed softly to gambol and play; but whereas when an innocent beast does this in the simple joy of its heart, and seems a fond and pretty sight, the Father thought he had never seen so ugly a sight as the beast gambolling all by itself, as if it could not contain its own ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... be getting back to Willett," said Mount quietly. "As for me, my errand is done, and the strange, fishy smells of New York town stifle me. I'm stale and timid, and I like not the shape of the gallows yonder. My health requires the half-light of the woods, Mr. Renault, and the friendly shadows which lie at hand like rat-holes in a granary. I've drunk all the ale at the Bull's-Head—weak stuff it was—and they've sent for more, but I can't wait. So we're off to the north to-night, friend, and we'll presently rinse our throats of ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... and Mr. Waldron entered. In the half-light of the room the little figure on the bed was dimly visible. Both men paused while the doctor laid a professional hand on the ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... with the last word, to the shelf where lay his racing mask and gauntlets. The melancholy drip from moist eaves and trees, the dreary half-light and heavy air had absolutely no depressing power upon his flawless nerves and vigor of life. By the open door he paused to look out, unconsciously clasping his hands behind his head with the leisurely grace and relaxation of one who found pleasure ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... been dazzling stone all day, Hollowed in smooth hard brightness, now dissolved To infinite soft depth, and smoulder'd down Low as the roofs, dark burning blue, and soared Clear to that winking drop of liquid silver, The first exquisite star. Now the half-light Tidied away the dusty litter parching Among the cobbles, veiled in the colour of distance Shabby slates and brickwork mouldering, turn'd The hunchback houses into patient things Resting; and golden windows ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... as he came to where the burst of flame was growing bigger, and Polke with a body of firemen and constables came hurrying through a gap in the lower wall, he caught sight of a man's face, turned up to the half-light. Easleby saw it at the same time—together they went nearer. And Starmidge bent down and found himself looking ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... him with her whole soul. And that alone now remained; his years of religious study with their monotonous lessons, their ever similar exercises and ceremonies, had flown away into the same haze, into a vague half-light, full of mortal silence. ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... I walked through that valley, and longer and longer would I pause in the spectral half-light where the giant trees squirmed and twisted grotesquely, and the grey ground stretched damply from trunk to trunk, sometimes disclosing the mould-stained stones of buried temples. And always the goal of my fancies was the mighty vine-grown wall with ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... sort of a moon was sinking in the west, and the bark branches of the trees stood out blackly in the half-light. ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... a dead tree before us and began his 'hoo-ho', as if it was laughing at me. I can see the place now—the mountain black and dismal, the moon low and strange-looking, the little waterhole glittering in the half-light, and this dark bird hooting away in the night. An odd feeling seemed to come over my mind, and if it had been the devil himself standing on the dead limb it could not have had a worse effect on me as I stopped there, uncertain ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... sights more melancholy than the wave-washed derelict—the now desolate, helpless and forlorn thing that was once a ship, the home of men—seen in the half-light of a winter dawn, rising and falling sluggishly on the dirty grey swell—the aftermath of storm—with white water washing through its broken bulwarks, yards and sails adrift, a thing without life on the ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... carbine went clanging down the rocks, burying itself in the snow. Another warrior rose slightly, took aim, but Johnson's six-shooter cracked again, and the Indian settled slowly down without firing. A squaw moved slowly in the half-light to where the buck lay. Bordeson drew ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... the boy slipped into a tangle of brush that marked the upper end of his patch of timber. The bare summit of the ridge stretched away in the half-light to merge in a mysterious blur with the indistinct valley of the Ten Bow. The wind was blowing gently from the ridge and the boy figured that if the wolf pack followed the summit as he hoped, they must pass within twenty yards of him. "If it don't go and cloud up before they get here I can see 'em ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... astonishment to encounter the dazzling smile of the Countess Astaride. She was standing slender as a young girl, all agleam in the half-light as though she wore an armor of glowing copper ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... this? Do they understand that the heart requires gradual changes, and that if a half-light awakens, a noon-day blaze dazzles and burns? It is not that the poor child, who is trembling in a corner, refuses to learn; far from that, she has aptitude, good-will, and a quick and ready intelligence; she knows ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... a handkerchief on the point of his sword. Jack could barely make it out in the half-light. At the same moment the officer commanding the Germans opposing Frank's small ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... need to answer him, for anew the child's cry rose in the wood—sharp, petulant, hungry. It came from a thick clump of undergrowth to the left of our night's lodging, not sixty yards away, and in the half-light of the morning had something ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... portraits to right and left of her loomed vaguely through the half-light. She glanced at each one as she passed slowly along, with the feeling that she was taking leave of them forever. In this way her gaze had been diverted from the direction of her own portrait, and she was within a few yards of it when, ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... his coat and waistcoat, descended the ladder into the presence of a roaring fire. He shot a glance at the closed bedroom door, and then hastily made his way out of the cabin and around to the well. Eliza was preparing breakfast. In the grey half-light he made out Striker and Zachariah moving about the barnlot. A rough but clean towel hung across the board wall of the well, while a fresh bucket of water stood on the shelf inside, its chain hanging limply from the towering end of the ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... certainly not an inspiring scene. The leaden skies, the heavy clouds, the dark land, and the gray-green of the sea, always shaded in perpetual half-light, lest the burning sun heat them beyond endurance. It was ...
— Islands of Space • John W Campbell
... the sinking sun struck through the glass panes on the western side of the hall and mingled with the gas, which was already turned on, to create a sort of strange half-light in which nobody seemed quite real. The couples swam round and round in this peculiar radiance, while the heavy figures watching appeared to recede ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... to none was he the tired lion weary of the chase. "His great delight . . . was to plunge into the darkening mere at eventide, his great head and heavy shoulders ruddy in the rays of the sun. Here he hissed and roared and spluttered, sometimes frightening the eel-catcher sailing home in the half-light, and remembering suddenly school legends of river-sprites and monsters of ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... aware of shouted orders, the creaking of the toiling, slipping ropes, little jolts and stoppages, two hundred eyes blinking up, not seeing their cringed-up limbs—unnecessary cautious: for the nearer they descended to-ward the half-light, the surer did the area of the lorry make their invisibility. At last they were near; the bell lingered, swinging; babel was around them; the Governor's voice; a cheer: the bell ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... first time that people of the forest had paused on the hill at twilight to look down on Bradleyburg. The sight always seemed to intrigue and mystify the wild folk,—the shadowed street, the spire of the moldering church ghostly in the half-light, the long row of unpainted shacks, and the dim, pale gleam of an occasional lighted window. The old bull moose, in rutting days, was wont to pause and call, listen an instant for such answer as the twilight city might give him, then push on through the spruce forests; and often the coyotes gathered ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... may look to us who cannot see behind the present nor beneath the surface. There are no mysteries per se, but only to the ignorant. Yet ignorance itself, disparagingly as we talk of it, has its favorable side,—as it is pleasant sometimes to withdraw from the sun and wander for a season in the half-light of the forest. Perhaps we need be in no haste to reach a world where there is never any darkness. In some moods, at least, I go with the partridge-berry vine and the lady's-slipper. It is good, I think, to live awhile longer in the shadow; to see as through a glass darkly; and to hear ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... noise made him quiver. The brown curtain was drawn back; he saw in the half-light a woman standing, but her face was hidden from him by the projection of a veil, which lay in many folds upon her head. According to the rule of the Order she was clothed in the brown garb whose color has become proverbial. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various
... In the half-light below he paused again, and seemed to send his piercing glance into every bunk, from the forward to the after bulkhead. Finally, satisfied that no one else was in the fo'c's'le, he went to his own sleeping place, on the port side, and kneeling beside ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... I went to dine every day at the Conciergerie with my two sons and my two imprisoned friends. These great hearts and great minds, Vacquerie, Meurice, Charles, and Francois Victor, attracted men of like quality. The livid half-light that crept in through latticed and barred windows disclosed a family circle at which there often assembled eloquent orators, among others Cremieux, and powerful and charming ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... cocked his pistol. But, even as it clicked, a figure rose up from behind the rotting wherry and, as Mr. Chichester leaned towards Barnabas, smiling still but with eyes of deadly menace, a hand, pale and claw-like in the half-light, fell and clenched itself upon ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... of Friday, July 21, we were within a hundred miles of the island, and we encountered the ice in the half-light. I waited for the full day and then tried to push through. The little craft was tossing in the heavy swell, and before she had been in the pack for ten minutes she came down on a cake of ice and broke ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... doorway, his outline lost in the deep shadows of the vine, was old Uncle Tim, while, upon the floor at his side lay little Tim, his grandson. The boy lay so still that in the dim half-light he seemed a part of the floor furnishings, which were, in fact, an old cot, two crippled stools, a saddle, and odds and ends of broken ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... our colleague exclaimed, says La Fayette: "I die for the sitting of the Jeu de Paume, and not for the fatal day at the Champ de Mars." I do not here intend to expound these mysterious words in the glimpses they give us by a half-light; but, whatever meaning we may attribute to them, it is evident that the sentiments and passions of the lower class have no share in them; it is a ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago
... them and hurried back to his room. Having opened and closed the door softly, he went to a chest of drawers near the window and fumbled in the half-light of the low-burning lamp. He slipped a small leather case into the breast pocket of his coat, and then stole back toward the door, as softly as before. With his hand on the knob, he paused and looked back. For all he knew, Sinclair ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... the imprisoned darknesses, below the fine fabric they sustain together begins for each of them a cavernous hidden life. Down there things may be prowling that scarce ever peep out to consciousness except in the grey half-light of sleepless nights, passions that flash out for an instant in an angry glance and are seen no more, starved victims and beautiful dreams bricked up to die. For the most of us there is no jail delivery of those inner depths, and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... from rods of old oak in tapestried masses on which the figures of some hunting scene are swarming, pieces of furniture worthy to have belonged to Madame de Pompadour, Persian rugs, et cetera. For a last graceful touch, all these elegant things were subdued by the half-light which filtered through embroidered curtains and added to their charm. On a table between the windows, among various curiosities, lay a whip, the handle designed by Mademoiselle de Fauveau, which proved that the countess ...
— Paz - (La Fausse Maitresse) • Honore de Balzac
... line, giving every man a pair of socks, a muffler or scarf, whichever he most wanted. In nearly every case it was socks; and how glad and grateful they were to get them! It struck me as rather funny when I noticed cards in the half-light affixed to the latter, texts (sometimes appropriate, but more often not) and verses of poetry. I thought of the kind hands that had knitted them in far away England and wondered if the knitters had ever imagined their things would ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... him. It was not yet light and Tim strained his eyes to pierce the darkness. Then he made a discovery. A dark mass, like some prehistoric monster, was gradually approaching. Tim spoke to a man next to him who was softly swearing and bandaging a shattered hand. He peered through the light and half-light of dawn, and then started to laugh in a nervous way. "Hell, mate;" he said, "the whole German race are advancing against us; it's all up with us. Look, they are coming on like a solid wall ... springing out of the earth just solid ... ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... the fellow?" thought Robert; but he said, civilly enough; "Oh, not at all, Mr. Joy. I will admit there are a good many of you, as you say, but that would not prevent my remembering a man to whom I was speaking only a few hours ago. It was only the half-light, and I did not expect to ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Saint Peter's-by-the-Sea was filled even on this hot July afternoon, to hear the famous Bishop, and in the half-light that fell through painted windows and lay like a dim violet veil against the gray walls, the congregation with summer gowns and flowery hats, had a billowy effect as of a wave tipped everywhere with foam. Fielding, sitting far back, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... balcony they watched the long, golden going down of the sun, and the creeping shadows, and the purple half-light, and the after-smile upon the crests. And then the heaven gathered itself in its night stillness, and the mountains were grand in the soft gloom, until the full moon came up ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the place of honour—say the central panel in a pale yellow or rose Dubarry drawing-room, or a monumental easel placed so that it took the light through curtains of old Venetian point. The more modest place became the picture better; yet, as my eyes grew accustomed to the half-light, all the characteristic qualities came out—all the hesitations disguised as audacities, the tricks of prestidigitation by which, with such consummate skill, he managed to divert attention from the real business of the picture to some pretty irrelevance of detail. Mrs. Gisburn, presenting ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... a time with her eyes fixed on the floor, then she raised her head and looked around at the void in which silence had fixed itself. The globe-lamps burning, here and there, at the walls, filled the drawing-room with a hazy, half-light, in which, here and there, glittered golden reflections, and the features of faces, and landscapes flimmered on pictures. Farther on, from the shady corner of the other drawing-room, slender and swelling vases appeared, partially; portions of white garlands on the walls; ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... crisscrossed by crevasses completely covered with snow. In bright weather it was often possible to detect them by a slight depression in the surface or by a faint, shadowy difference in tint, but in the half-light of cloudy and misty weather these signs failed, and there was no safety but in the ceaseless prodding of the pole. The ice-axe will not serve—one cannot reach far enough forward with it for safety, and the incessant stooping is an unnecessary ...
— The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley) - A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest - Peak in North America • Hudson Stuck
... window-pane. He opened the window at once, and the man poured forth a torrent of German, which W. fortunately understood. While he was talking W. saw forms, their muskets and helmets showing out quite distinctly in the half-light, crossing the lawn and coming up some of the broad paths. It was a disagreeable sight, which he was destined to see ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... answered the door as she had done previously and he sat in the same seat he had occupied the night before. He had a sense of intrusion—he felt that he was being tolerated. Helen had removed the bandage from her wrist and she looked very handsome in the half-light of a screened electric bulb. He noticed that flowers had been placed in one of the vases on the mantelshelf and that the mandarin skirt clung a trifle less precisely to the polished surface of the oak piano. A magazine ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the Judge. "I know you." The other peered at him in the half-light. "My name's Molehill. We met at Rome—over ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... half-light of the coming day he looked supernatural—a strange spirit from under the earth or above the earth, but not of the earth. This was borne in upon Patsy's consciousness, and it set her Celtic blood tingling and her ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... it happens, he's apparently playing the game."—In the half-light, Smith stared at me significantly—"Which makes it all the more important," he concluded, "that we should not ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... man's pace did not slacken, but the straight back was bent at an angle which showed the priest had been accustomed to mountain climbing. In the leafy half-light, which is neither dawn nor twilight, but that reverential effulgence which is made by moonlight sifting finely through midsummer foliage, the Rothel murmured over its rocky bed; once, when in a deep pool its babble wholly ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... glass with a clear white varnish, and when dry, a preparation is finally applied, which increases the transparency, and adds tenfold brilliancy to the effect. There is another design, printed in imitation of the half-light (abatiour;) this is used principally for a ground, covering the whole surface of the glass, within which (the necessary spaces having been previously cut out before it is stuck on the glass,) are placed medallion centres of Watteau figures, perfectly transparent, which derive increased brilliancy ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... long hair, a full beard, wild-looking eyes, a pale face, framed in large whiskers,—as well as I could distinguish, and, as I think—red in colour. I did not know the face. That was, in brief, the chief sensation I received from that face in the dim half-light in which I saw it. I did not know it—or, at least, I did not ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... she was surrounded by guards. There were soldiers everywhere; two had stood behind the door when first she entered, and had immediately closed it with a loud clang behind her; and all the way down the corridors, through the half-light engendered by feebly flickering lamps, she caught glimpses of the white facings on the uniforms of the town guard, or occasionally the glint of steel of a bayonet. Presently Chauvelin paused beside a door, which he had just reached. His hand was on ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... But the ease with which the door lifted came as something of a surprise. It came up silently, almost sending Cleek over backward, as indeed it would have done a man with less poise, but he easily recovered himself. He and Dollops cautiously approached the edge, and in the half-light which the moon shed upon it (they did not use Cleek's torch) saw that a flight of roughly-made clay steps led down into darkness below. They sat back upon their heels ...
— The Riddle of the Frozen Flame • Mary E. Hanshew
... above the mountain a moment before there glowed a great pool of red that dripped across the blackness in faint tricklings. The outlines of the foot-hills loomed huge, formless, uncouth. In the half-light it seemed a world struggling in the birth-throes. All day the dry, burning heat had quivered over the desert, like hot-air waves flickering over a bed of live coals, and now the very earth seemed to palpitate with ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... and superbly built, with every muscle ready and even eager for use. His thirty years sat lightly upon him, though his dark hair was already slightly grey at the temples, for his great brown eyes were boyish and always would be. In the half-light, his clean-cut profile was outlined against the sky, and his mouth trembled perceptibly. He had neither the thin, colourless lips that would have made men distrust him, nor the thick lips that would have warned women to go slowly with him and ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... in chairs near by. I could see Labrouk's face plainly in the flickering light: a rough, wholesome face it was, refined by death, yet unshaven and unkempt, too. Here was work for Voban's shears and razor. Presently there was a footstep behind me, and, turning, I saw in the half-light the widowed wife. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... November Elections: to the joy of most citizens; nay the very Court supported Petion rather than Lafayette. And so Bailly and his Feuillants, long waning like the Moon, had to withdraw then, making some sorrowful obeisance, into extinction;—or indeed into worse, into lurid half-light, grimmed by the shadow of that Red Flag of theirs, and bitter memory of the Champ-de-Mars. How swift is the progress of things and men! Not now does Lafayette, as on that Federation-day, when his noon was, 'press his sword firmly on the Fatherland's Altar,' and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... occasion to notice, that the first entrance into one of our vast American forests is apt to reduce the greatest talker to silence. In the present instance, I found the truth of this remark fully confirmed. Whether it was the subdued half-light of the luxuriant wilderness through which we were passing, the solemn stillness, only broken by the rustling of the dead leaves under our feet, or the colossal dimensions of the mighty trees, that rose like so many giants around us, that ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... they "mixed." Presently Cal, stretched the long length of him in the grass, with Pink sitting comfortably upon his middle, looked up at the dizzying swim of the moon, saw new and uncharted stars, and nearer, dimly revealed in the half-light, the self-satisfied, cherubic ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... light and shade in their various intricate relations, it may be proper to notice a few of the more palpable and self-evident combinations; and for the better comprehending of which I shall divide them into five parts, viz.: Light, half-light, middle tint, half-dark and dark. When a picture is chiefly composed of light and half-light, the darks will have more force and point, but without the help of strong color to give it solidity it will be apt to look feeble, and when a picture is composed mainly of dark and half-dark ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt
... a while, and then I got a match and lit the lamp that stood ready on the table, for the half-light began to grow dreary, as it is apt to do when one has a short week ago buried the hope of one's life. Next, I opened a cupboard in the wainscoting and got a bottle of whisky and some tumblers and water. I always like to ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... the doctor loved my sister through me—that I found some strange place in his great love for her, to which I had no title, but was most glad to have. For, then, in the sheltering half-light, he lifted me from my bed—crushed me against his breast—held me there, whispering messages I could not hear—and gently laid me down again, and went in haste away. And I dressed in haste: but fumbled at all ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... shape, three high narrow windows admitting the light through small, old-fashioned panes. Just at present there was not much to admit, for it was raining hard, and the afternoon was wearing on to dusk; but even the wet half-light showed you solid mahogany furniture, old-fashioned as the windows themselves, black and shining with age and polish; a carpet soft and thick, but its once rich hues dim and faded; oil paintings of taste and merit, some of them portraits, on the papered walls, the red glow of ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... prey, even in the unnatural turn of a trodden leaf, is yet so blunt to the impressions of shade, that Mr. Catlin mentions his once having been in great danger from having painted a portrait with the face in half-light, which the untutored observers imagined and affirmed to be the painting of half a face. Barry, in his sixth lecture, takes notice of the same want of actual sight in the early painters of Italy. "The imitations," ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... chilled and pained me. In the first place, it took from me a hope long cherished,—that of recovering a mother as loving as yours, of whose adorable tenderness, dear friend, you have so often told me. After all, it was a half-light thrown upon the fogs of my life without even allowing me to know whether I was or was not the child of a legitimate marriage. It also seemed to me that such paternal intimations addressed to a man of my age were much too despotic and imperious. ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... water that lay there, black and still, Decros showing evident reluctance and restlessness the while, so strongly was his mind affected by all the stories he had heard about the pool. Moreover, it was rapidly growing dusk. In this half-light the funnel in which we were standing certainly did look a very diabolic and sinister hole. The fancy aiding, everything partook of the supernatural: the dark masses of brambles hanging from the rocks, the wild vines clinging to them with ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... interest to them both—filled with work and with happiness just short of that perfect satisfaction—that completeness—that unattainable which it is part of being a mortal with an immortal mind and soul to be continually striving after, and missing, and will be until the half-light of this world is merged into the light ineffable ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... a "jungling." He had a very vulgar surname, too vulgar to be spoken; it was breathed against Miriam's shoulder in the half-light. Miriam was begged to forget it at once and to remember only the beautiful little name ...
— Pointed Roofs - Pilgrimage, Volume 1 • Dorothy Richardson
... she found herself greeted in the half-light by a chorus of equine whinnying such as she had never before experienced, and the sound thrilled her. There stood the team of great Clydesdale horses, their long, fiddle heads turned round staring at ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... still and waited. Above the chant we could hear the striking of the city clocks, and the occasional rattle of a cart in the street overhead. The absolute watchfulness and expectation, the dim, mysterious half-light of the cellar falling in a grewsome way upon the misshapen bulk of a Chinese deity in the back ground, a faint smell of opium-smoke mingling with spice, and the dreadful uncertainty of what we were really waiting for, sent an uncomfortable thrill down our backs, and made ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... scraps of the completed overture, suggesting, praising, criticising it with an acumen which surprised even the young composer, though he was fast learning to attribute omniscience to his friend. After the shabby room with its half-light, after the intent earnestness of Arlt, Thayer felt a passing dislike of the gorgeousness and glare and frivolity of the dinner. He was the last man to assert that good art can only associate itself with ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray |
