"Filmy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... yellow fields of harvest and green orchards, white roads and clustering towns, with here and there a little city on the bank of the mighty river which curved in a vast line of beauty toward the blue Catskill Range, fifty miles away. Lines of filmy smoke, like vanishing footprints in the air, marked the passage of railway trains across the landscape—their swift flight reduced by distance to a leisurely transition. The bright surface of the stream was furrowed ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... here, and shallow white surf stretched seaward across the flats. The sea roared continuously without that rise and fall of the breakers which marks a deeper coast, and from the face of the water there arose a filmy mist—part foam, part phosphorescence. ...
— Roden's Corner • Henry Seton Merriman
... car and following an upward path, finally stood on the lower shoulder of Twin Peaks. Tired from our exertions we sank upon the soft grass. The hills had put on their festival attire, catching up their emerald gowns with bunches of golden poppies and veiling their shoulders in filmy scarfs of blue lupins. The air was filled with Spring and the delicate blush of an apple-tree told of the approach of Summer. Below, the city, noisy and bustling a few moments ago, now lay hushed to quiet by the distance and beyond, the sun-flecked waters of the bay ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... tone; "a little more reading up, a bit of experience, and she'll work wonders. She doesn't know it, but she's psychic—of course this is going to be fun; not real. Just a lure. We'll have Joan in a long white robe—a girl I know can design it. We'll have a filmy veil over the lower part of her face—mystery, you know. Look at her eyes, Elspeth, aren't they great? Give that 'into-the-future' ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... and the next instant the door opened. Madge entered the room, holding in one white hand a crumpled letter. She wore a gown of lustrous rose-colored material, with filmy lace on the throat and bosom, and her splendid hair strayed coyly over her neck and temples. She had never looked more dazzlingly ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... ever and ever the cold stars, the cloudless sky, the moon at full, or swung like a white sickle in the sky to warn him that his life must be mown like grass. At night to sleep in a bag of fur and wool, by day the steely wind, or the air shaking with a filmy powder of frost; while the illimitably distant sun made the tiny flakes sparkle like silver—a poudre day, when the face and hands are most like to be frozen, and all so still and white and passionless, yet ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... after my last letter, that under the title of real ghosts, I am going to introduce to your acquaintance a set of personages resembling Madame Tussaud's wax-work, done in air—filmy gentlemen, in spectral blue coats, gray trousers, Wellingtons; and semi-transparent ladies clad from the looms of the other world. No, Nicolai's case, has extinguished that delusion. The visitant and his dress are figments of the imagination ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... too" young Mrs. Fairfax said, returning his kiss and dropping basket and scissors to bestow all her attention upon his buttonhole rose. "There is no special occasion for all this extravagance," she added, giving a complacent downward glance at the filmy embroideries of her gown, and her small whiteshod feet. "In fact, to-day breaks before me a long and delicious blank. I don't know when I have had such a Saturday. I shall write letters this morning—or perhaps wash my hair—I don't know. And then I'll take Mrs. Elliot for a drive ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... his stand in a corner, where he bent over Frau Leimann, who was seated and fanning herself with her handkerchief. Although fatigued from heat and dancing, she looked most seductive in her pale blue tulle, whose filmy lace clouds around throat and bosom heightened the effects of her charms. Borgert, bending over her, sniffed with sensual delight a faint perfume, while he carried on a whispered conversation in ...
— A Little Garrison - A Realistic Novel of German Army Life of To-day • Fritz von der Kyrburg
... opal from some elfin treasury Burning with fire and flashing every shade; While round the dim horizon, wide displayed The clouds pile up their largess tenderly As if to clothe the beauty of the sea In filmy gossamer and soft brocade. ...
— The Rose-Jar • Thomas S. (Thomas Samuel) Jones
... his garb. His robe was of black, with startling and unexpected flashes of scarlet lining when he walked. Black chains clanked drearily about his waist and wrists. There was a cunningly concealed light in his filmy turban which gave it the singular appearance of a dark cloud lighted by an inner fire. As he wandered about with clanking chains, he played strange music upon a polished thing of hollow bones. Sometimes the music laughed and wooed when eyes were ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... Clarice had sealed those vows which they had kept so steadfastly and truly during life, but of the present world, bright with promise for each of them, in which there was but one shade of sorrow—that filmy web that shut out the beauties of nature from the sight of that most beautiful of ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... and even playfully, but she gave Margaret a searching glance, as though she would have read the girl's heart if she could. But she was reassured. Margaret was smiling now; she was as calm as ever; she had brushed the tears from her eyes with a filmy handkerchief and looked perfectly serene. "I am rather glad that you have found Sir Philip unreasonable, mamma," she said, placidly; "I always thought so, but you did not quite agree ...
— A True Friend - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... walked along with him. Now if the man would lift his head! And presently he did so, letting the light of the lanterns strike full in his face, pale, dazed, pinched with dread; the beard roughed; the eyes filmy, sunken, and despairing. In much going about following the Nazarene, Ben-Hur had come to know his disciples as well as the Master; and now, at sight of the dismal countenance, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... o'clock, and took a road that was new to Winona, consequently all the more interesting. Their way led through lovely woods, at present a sheet of blue hyacinths, the hedges were a filmy dream of blackthorn blossom, while the swallows wheeling and flashing in the sunshine testified to ...
— The Luckiest Girl in the School • Angela Brazil
... Cleopatra was the only one outside, for Rachel Guest was dreaming her own dream, with an extremely practical side to it, unless Biddy and I were mistaken. She wore Monny's clothes, and used her special perfume, and took advantage of the same initials, to accept gifts of filmy handkerchiefs and monogrammed bags and brushes. Also she had firmly annexed most of the men on board who would, in normal states of mind, have belonged to the Gilded Rose. But they all seemed to have gone mad on the subject of Miss Guest. Even ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... the filmy clouds-landed him with a bump upon hard rock. He was not supposed to know their address. How, to the dragon, could he explain the venal trick by which he had acquired it? Now he beheld a new picture. Himself in the drawing-room; to him the dragon; her ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... the Baron, and there stuck. 'Wife you cherish,' whispered the denounced one; and, thus primed, the inexorable Baron resumed, and, having reached 'Wife you cherish,' stuck again. 'Children you adore,' whispered Jim the Penman, gazing upward at his tyrant with filmy eyes of suffering. ...
— The Making Of A Novelist - An Experiment In Autobiography • David Christie Murray
... meeting with Holcomb since the time when he saved her husband's life, consisted of a slight nod of recognition and an annoyed "How do you do?" She wore a smart travelling gown of Scotch homespun and a becoming toque of gray straw enveloped in a filmy dragon-green veil. Holcomb thought it strange that Thayor kissed his daughter and simply greeted his wife with the question, "I do hope you were comfortable, dear, ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... obviously not listening very attentively to Jean's enthusiastic explanation of her plan for the afternoon. He kept his eyes lowered. They rested on the handkerchief he had picked up, but hardly as if, after all, they saw it, though he turned the filmy square from corner to corner with an air partly ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins
... on the left the road is overtopped by masses of noble forest. The old park of Brandon lies there, more than four miles from end to end. These masses of solemn and discoloured verdure, the faint but splendid lights, and long filmy shadows, the slopes and hollows—my eyes wandered over them all with that strange sense of unreality, and that mingling of sweet and bitter fancy, with which we revisit a scene familiar in very remote and early childhood, and which has haunted a long interval ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... With filmy eyes Tommy searched himself for the little pocket-book in which he took notes of such sad thoughts as these, and in place of the book he found a glove wrapped in silk paper. He sat there with it in his hand, nodding his head over it so broken-heartedly you ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... out of the building into the cool, starlit night. People were strolling about in evening clothes, hatless, the women in white opera cloaks and filmy gowns, their silk-stockinged feet very much in evidence, resembling almost some strange kind of tropical birds with their little shrill laughter and graceful movements, as they made their way towards the Club or round to the Rooms, or to one of the restaurants ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... red leaves, On the languid zephyr's breath, Fluttered to the mossy hillocks Where their sisters slept in death: And the white mist of the Autumn Hung o'er mountain-top and dale, Soft and filmy, as the foldings ...
— Indian Legends and Other Poems • Mary Gardiner Horsford
... a new government, a new premier!" Turcas repeated, with firm, methodical politeness. Westerling looking from one face to another with filmy eyes, lowered them before Bouchard. "There's a room ready for Your Excellency up-stairs," Turcas continued. "The orderly ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... and thereafter various soft and filmy garments flew thick and fast as the girls got ready for the treat which had been postponed all through the long, long day,—almost the ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... out the other for him to grasp. She was so joyously happy, and she had such a romantic mind. I conceived her so sympathetic that she always laughed before he came to the joke, and I am sure she had filmy eyes from the very ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... illusory vision. He assumes, perhaps with some truth, that the distinction between dream and reality is more faintly marked in the less developed mind; in the child than in the adult, in the savage than in the civilized man. Hence a belief arises in a filmy phantasmal self that wanders abroad in sleep and leaves the body untenanted, and meets and converses with other phantasmal selves. Nor is it hard to see how death, being viewed as a permanent sleep, should be ascribed ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... that in renouncing his allegiance to the Episcopal faith he had gone to the extreme of renouncing marriage, in order that the Mother Church might become his only bride. True, Linford said nothing at all like this;—the idea was fleeting, filmy, traceable to no specific words of his. Yet it left a track across the mind. It seemed to be the very spirit of his speech upon the subject. Certainly no other reason had been suggested for the regrettable, severance of this domestic ...
— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson
... owes it's sparkling birth, And with prismatic crystals gems the earth, 145 O'er tottering domes in filmy foliage crawls, Or frosts with branching plumes the mouldering walls. As woos Azotic Gas the virgin Air, And veils in crimson clouds the yielding Fair, Indignant Fire the treacherous courtship flies, 150 Waves his light wing, and mingles with ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... it now, glittering on the surface," cried the Vicar, as excitedly as the boy. "Wonderful! quite large filmy patches floating. My dear Brandon, it really ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... rain; but the heavenly valley was the more mystic because of the showers. Huge white clouds walked ahead of us, like ghosts of pre-historic animals; and baby clouds sprawled on the mountain sides, with all their filmy legs ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... at six, and I told him I thought you'd be agreeable.' And when we met, he—— Why do handkerchiefs invariably hide when people want to sneeze behind them?" She found the ridiculous little square of filmy embroidered cambric, and blew her thin little nose, and furtively whisked away a tear-drop. "He never moved a muscle; Just shook hands in his kind, hearty way, and began to tell the news of the town.... Never, by look or word or sign, helped to rub in what a beetle-headed idiot I'd been." ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... scarab? It is one my dear pal bought me in Egypt. Come away, dear, let us run from the crowd—let us steal away together, somewhere—anywhere —you and I." And speaking, she drew about her shoulders a scarf, a filmy thing of gossamer, spangled with gold stars. "Quick, Peregrine!" she breathed. "There is the duke—coming this way, ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... jewels with which they were loaded made their fatigued looks, dark-ringed eyes, heavy profiles, thick flabby lips, like a dromedary's, still more distressing; and with their bare necks and arms—it was etiquette at Madame Fontaine's receptions—which allowed one to see through filmy lace their flabby flesh or bony skeletons, they were as ridiculous as an elegant cloak would be ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... Alice bubbling over with fun and spirits, found her cousin Douglas, whom in general she disliked, far better company than usual. As for him, he was only really conscious of one face and form in the stately dance itself, or in the glittering crowd which was eagerly looking on. Constance Bledlow, in filmy white, was his vis-a-vis. He saw her quick movement as she perceived him. Then she bowed slightly, he ceremoniously. Their hands touched at intervals, and not a few of the spectators noticed these momentary contacts with a thrill of pleasure—the ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to a filmy vapour floating away and dissolving in the sunshine. "You did not see that before because you fired. Don't you see? ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... behind the dark mass of the Mole, (a huge blue-black mountain in the foreground,) the granite ranges rising gradually and grim as we rode; but, further still, behind those gray and ghastly barriers, all bathed and blazing in the sun's fresh splendors, undimmed by a cloud, unveiled even by a filmy fleece of vapor, and oh, so white—so intensely, blindingly white! against the dark-blue sky, the needles, the spires, the solemn pyramid, the transfiguration cone of Mont Blanc. Higher, and still ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... and moved with the rapid, swimming step peculiar to women who are accustomed to the eyes of critical assemblages. Her thin black dress was too elaborate for a country drive; it was a concession to the heat which yet permitted the wearing of a hat, a filmy creation supporting a pair of wings that started up from her beautiful head like white flames. But Mrs. Thorne chiefly observed the look of tense preparation in the face that met hers. She retreated a little from what she felt to be ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... begins to shape itself along the verge of the sea, far to port: that long heavy clouding which indicates the approach of land. And from it now floats to us something ghostly and frigid which makes the light filmy and the sea shadowy as a flood of dreams,—the fog ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... his look, and he wakened up so strange!" She paused to let me see the child's face; it was flushed almost to a crimson look of heat, and his breathing was laboured and uneasy, his eyes half-open and filmy. ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... was white, with a sickly pasty whiteness. In the few hours that had passed he seemed to have wasted to a startling gauntness. His cheeks were drawn, his sunken eyes dull and filmy. He moved slowly and heavily, as if compelling himself under an ...
— The Crooked House • Brandon Fleming
... more the long lines of shimmering light trailing off into the deep shadow of the wooded banks, no more the tremulous reflection of the moon, swinging like some supernal craft in the great lacustrine sweep where the stream broadens in rounding the point. Now a filmy veil was over all, yet the night was so fine that the light filtered through the mist, and objects were still discernible, though only vaguely visible, like the furnishings of a dream. A rowboat was rocking on the ripples among the boulders at ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... So the false spider, when her nets are spread, Deep ambush'd in her silent den does lie: And feels far off the trembling of her thread, Whose filmy cord ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... the morning looking at you as it is looking at me? A little to the right of the sun there lies a small cloud, filmy and faint, but enough to cast a shadow somewhere. From this window, high up over the view, I cannot see where the shadow of it falls,—further than my eye can reach: perhaps just now over you, since you lie further west. But I cannot be sure. We ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... her undoing. The loose chiffon sleeve she wore brushed against the glowing coals as she pushed the letter frantically between the bars; and a bright tongue of flame shot suddenly up her arm and ignited the masses of filmy lace which disguised the thinness of ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... a New Bedford whaleman say that he could not forget his eyes," said Captain Scarrow. "They were of the lightest filmy blue, with red-rimmed lids. Was that ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... clasped with a flashing diamond. A solitaire diamond blazed on her left hand—those slender, delicate little hands—her engagement ring, no doubt. They were all the jewels she wore. The trimming of her dress was of filmy black lace, and all her masses of bright golden hair were twisted coronet-wise round her noble and lovely head. She was very tall, very slender; and the exquisite face just tinted with only the faintest shadow of rose. "Beautiful, and stately, and proud ...
— Kate Danton, or, Captain Danton's Daughters - A Novel • May Agnes Fleming
... listlessly out over the long rows of corn still to be cultivated. Near at hand the young stalks seemed strong enough to win in their struggle toward the sun, but the distant corn lay like a filmy shadow of green on the black soil. Behind the cultivator, a flock of blackbirds fed in the fresh-turned earth. The boy watched them with half-shut eyes. When one of the birds had fed, it would hop upon a lump of wet, black earth, and being ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... of her face and wave of her hair, every line of her trim figure which her filmy gown seemed to accentuate rather than conceal added ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... she had a quiet dinner-party, to which Mary came down in her frock of filmy black, which made a delightful setting for her fair paleness. At these dinners she encountered famous men and women, and looked at them from afar off with wistful interest. In the drawing-room afterwards she saw Lady Agatha the centre of a ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... dressed in a frock of filmy grey-green chiffon whose colour reminded him of the spiky leaves of a carnation; but he had never seen her look prettier than on that mild spring night; and his eyes unconsciously softened as they dwelt upon her face ...
— Afterwards • Kathlyn Rhodes
... passing of years all becomes dim—so dim that even asleep you know 'tis only a ghost-city, with streets going to nowhere. And finally whatever is left of it becomes confused and blended with cloudy memories of other cities,—one endless bewilderment of filmy architecture in which nothing is distinctly recognizable, though the whole gives the sensation of having been seen before ... ever ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... who came with many moons to sell Opened his basket wide; Showed me the filmy crescent moons in it, And the piled discs (like silver spoons) in it That push and pull the tide, And small sweet honey-moons to ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 15, 1920 • Various
... to tea: "Just like a man!" Heedless of every propriety: "Just like a man!" Grumbling at money she spends for spats And filmy dresses and gloves and hats, Yet wanting her stylishly garbed, and that's "Just like ...
— All That Matters • Edgar A. Guest
... and pleasant evening. The sun had gone down in red fire behind the Atlantic, and there was still left a rich glow of crimson in the west, while overhead, in the pale yellow of the sky, some filmy clouds of rose color lay motionless. How calm was the sea out there, and the whiter stretch of water coming into Loch Roag! The cool air of the twilight was scented with sweetbrier. The wash of the ripples along the coast could be heard ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... having quite different fare. In front of him stood the Doctor, busily feeding filmy white bits into the tear ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... train of rustic cavaliers, noble, vigorous-looking men. Standing at the balcony, we missed the sight of the heroes of the day, who had gone round by other streets. We, therefore, went to the cathedral, where all the principal persons in Servia were assembled. One old man, with grey, filmy, lack-lustre eyes, pendant jaws, and white beard, was pointed out to me as a centenarian ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... and impromptu and did not at all lift her out of the environment of the Duchess's ancient and grimy house. But Larry was so startled by this changed Maggie that for the moment he could not have moved from the door even had he so desired. She was accoutered in the smartest of filmy evening gowns, with the short skirt which was then the mode, with high-heeled silver slippers, her rounded arms and shoulders and bosom bare, her abundant black hair piled high in careful carelessness. The gown was cerise in color, and from her forearm hung a great fan of ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... had gone farther. It was somewhere in the far west, where there are orchards and gardens, and great broad lawns that slope down to trees by the river. A great red moon rose that night through mists of sunset, and thin, filmy clouds, and I wandered by a road that passed through the orchards, till I came to a little hill, with the moon showing above it glowing like a great rose. Then I saw figures pass between me and the moon, one by one, in a long line, each bent ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... running into the harbour. Clara ran forward with a cry of pleasure, her troubles forgotten as she saw the harbour lying like a map at her feet. The opposite shore curved into miniature bays, with the spires and towers of the city etched on a filmy blue sky. The mass of bricks and mortar in front was Paddington and Woollahra, leafless and dusty where they had trampled the trees and green grass beneath their feet; the streets cut like furrows in a field of brick. As the eye travelled eastward from Double Bay to South Head the red roofs became ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... by me! Now, God, let me serve Thee as Thou deservest. Thou hast taken away all my sons. Now then the devil may have my soul, for Thou shalt never have it.' The death-rattle was heard in his throat, and Hugh sprang forward to help him: he was still stiffly upright, still looking (though with filmy eyes) at the wall, still trying to shape in words his wicked vaunts. No words came from him; his jaw dropped before his strong old body. They brought him the Sacrament; his soul rejected it—too clean food. Hugh and others about him, all in a sweat, got him down at last. They ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... hands and smiling at Keith even as he spoke. His eyes had taken on a filmy glitter. The law! It stood there, without heart or soul, coveting the life that had escaped it. A feeling ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... of the girl's step in the doorway Mrs. Coombe opened her eyes. They were very filmy to-night, blank, contented. Her nervousness seemed to have left her. Perhaps she was half asleep, for she yawned, an open, ugly yawn, which she did not trouble to ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... his speaking Nancy came to the door with mutinous eyes, a riot of color in her cheeks, and some filmy white stuff drawn round her head and shoulders, and as she stood Danvers turned ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... assurances, Copplestone slept little. He was up, dressed, and on deck by sunrise, staring around him in a fresh autumn morning to get some notion of the yacht's whereabouts, and he had just managed to make out a mere filmy line of land far to the westward when Audrey appeared at his elbow. There was no one of any importance near them and Copplestone ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher
... understood passion dominating her, she let everything go and the torrent sweep her with it. Passion, like a lovely wild beast, had mastered her, and she never thought of trying to tame it. It was herself! there was not enough of her outside the passion to stand up against it! She began to see the filmy eyed Despair, and had neither experience to deal with herself, nor ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... rumble of water-wheels, the puff of laboring engines, and the groan of tortured machinery never ceased. Machine-shops and cotton-factories, bagging-mills and box-mills, and wrapping-mills, and print-mills, and fine-paper-mills, and even mills for the making of those filmy creations of marvellous texture and wonderful durability which become the representatives of value in the form of bank-notes, were crowded into the narrow gorges. The water was fouled with chemic combinations from ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... porch of the hotel, his hands in his pockets, his eyes presumably on the stars—certainly he gave no signs of watching Claire and the man in riding-breeches as they leaned over the rail, looked at mountain-tops filmy in starlight, while in the cologne-atomized ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... was placid and still; his black hair and beard were slightly, very slightly, discomposed. His eyes stared wide-open, glassy and vacant, at the ceiling. The filmy look and the fixed expression of them horrified me. I turned away, and went to the open window. The rest of them remained, where Sergeant Cuff remained, at ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... scintillant as diamond dust. We sat down to rest on some scattered boulders, and gazed with wonder at the magnificent vistas of glowing peaks towering above us, and the luminous expanse of purple gorge and valley, with the white, roaring torrents below, over which wreaths of foam-like filmy mist hovered and floated continually. As I sat, lost in admiration, St. Aubyn touched my arm, and silently pointed to Theodor Raoul. He had risen, and now stood at the edge of the plateau over-hanging the lowland landscape, his head raised, his eyes wide-opened, his ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... furniture was ivory-white, and Julia Cloud's room was furnished in French gray enamel, with insets of fine cane-work. She stood a moment in the open doorway, and looked about the place; soft gray walls, with a trellis of roses at the top, filmy white draperies with a touch of rose, a gray couch luxuriously upholstered, with many pillows, some rose, some gray, a thick, gray rug under her feet, and her own little gray desk drawn out conveniently when ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... for soon would begin a low twitter that swelled louder and louder, as bird after bird joined in until every family of birds was represented. From the back porch of the house could be seen a range of blue misty hills, that Roberta called brides. They were often enveloped in white filmy folds, like bridal veils, and one might catch glimpses of the river from there also gliding along ...
— That Old-Time Child, Roberta • Sophie Fox Sea
... larger and larger, until it had swept over the further edge of the ruins and into view of the dense multitudes below. It drooped across the space and rose and passed overhead, rising to clear the mass of the Council House, a filmy translucent shape with the solitary aeronaut peering down through its ribs. It vanished beyond ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... cat in a rug, enjoyed the thought of the force of the creature capable of wearing it lightly for a garment. Withal the rough, soft surface of it was agreeable to the hand. Out of one of the immense pockets hung the end of a coloured silk muffler, filmy as anything ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... sit here musing over the past, faces I have known come back to me and I love to wonder what fate held in store for them, as advancing, the filmy mists of their futures were slowly lifted until the last veil was drawn back and the story of ...
— Futurist Stories • Margery Verner Reed
... cried Roy, the name occurring to him in a flash of inspiration as he watched the filmy outlines of the other aeroplane melt ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... leaf and woody perennial plants in full blossom, dotted the sward. The long, low stone building was covered with vines that hung in rich purple bloom. All was quiet, refined, subdued—without pomp. Not so was the chief inmate of this charming abode. She stood gowned in filmy white, waiting for Janet to spread her repast, but the nurse moved at leisure, resolving to give the maid meat for thought, as she did for ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... moth on filmy wings Into his solitary lair; Shrill evensong the cricket sings From some still shadow ...
— Songs of Childhood • Walter de la Mare
... a little flushed in the midst of her dainty garments; and the room seemed at that moment to be full of a very charming atmosphere of girlish admiration and pleasure. One after another the filmy things were touched softly or held up to the light, while the two pairs of eyes—one pair deeply glowing and the other wide and bright—met over them ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... streamer at a masthead; how smooth and silky they are in texture, and how finely their fading fringes are penciled on the azure sky. See how dense and opaque they are at the point of attachment, and how filmy and translucent toward the end, so that the peaks back of them are seen dimly, as though you were looking through ground glass. Yet again observe how some of the longest, belonging to the loftiest summits, stream perfectly free all the way across intervening notches and passes from peak to ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... fastidious. Gems they possess in abundance. Flowers are so common that their beds are made of them. Their books are 'the running brooks,' and their art treasures hang on every bough. The Queen had woven a veil of lace with her own fingers; it was filmy and exquisite, but my heart sank within me when she declared that nothing less than a wreath of snow-flakes must accompany it. To obtain this wreath and carry it to the Fays as a birthday gift was to ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... has been investigated by the Rev. L. Jenyns, of Bath. His description is of minute worms in filmy envelopes. He tries to account for their segregation. The mystery of it is: What could have brought so many of them together? Many other falls we shall have record of, and in most of them segregation is the great mystery. ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... ours in that ambiguous And filmy phrase, why then you lie; And if to yours—we hope to be contiguous To our objective by-and-by, But for the present, though the end is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 31, 1917 • Various
... silenced other voices. Birds do not build, nor squirrels climb too near that deep reverberating note, although the blue heron, fearless, frequently stands in summer on the spray-washed rock and seems to listen. Below the filmy smoke of rainbowed arches there is quiet black water, with circles, oily, ominous, moving stealthily along, and below these—a quarter of a mile down—the rapids, swift, impetuous, flashing, ushering in the latter half of the St. Ignace, here at last the river of life and motion, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... some were as yet unknown to me, but my mother, who had an extensive acquaintance with foreign birds, said that in that strange murderous mixture of millinery, far-away Australia had furnished the filmy feathers of the lyre bird which swept upward from a knot of ribbons, and that the forests of Germany had contributed the pretty green linnet. Dove's wings and the rosy breast of the grosbeak completed the ...
— Dickey Downy - The Autobiography of a Bird • Virginia Sharpe Patterson
... the very last stitch to be taken on your trousseau, Charlotte," said Letitia, as she laid down the filmy garment she had been adorning with blue bowknots. "Press it, Sallie, and lay it with the rest of the set in the second tray of the medium-sized trunk. You can lock it and ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... at the olona fibers inwrought, Like the trickling brooklets of Wai-hilau. The olona, fibers knit with strength This dainty immaculate web, the pa-u, 25 And the filmy weft of the kilo-hana. With the small bamboo ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... one's troop for five hours, and in a drizzle too! Houses oughtn't to meet until the day's fine; I'm sure they are in no hurry," said Cecil to himself, as he pocketed a dainty, filmy handkerchief, all perfume, point, and embroidery, with the interlaced B. C., and the crest on the corner, while he looked hopelessly out of the window. He was perfectly happy, drenched to the skin on the moors after a royal, or in a fast thing with the Melton ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... luscious mass of bridemaids' roses, was laid on a circle of filmy, transparent "bolting cloth," the edge of which was embroidered with a wreath of pink roses of natural size and varied shades. Even the salt was contained "in the heart of a rose"—tiny little porcelain affairs—originally intended ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... was "just a fairy of a crathur, and too little for anythin'," and she was, no doubt, diminutive in size. Nor had she any brilliancy of colouring to make amends in a humming-bird's fashion for the insignificance of her proportions, resembling rather, with her dark eyes and hair, one of those filmy white blossoms which look the paler and frailer for their knots of ebon stamens, or the delicate moth who shows fine black pencillings among his pearly down. Still, nobody denied that she had "an uncommon purty face of her own," and the ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... suspicions that the day's events had set running through his brain. All Sue Desha had said, and had meant without saying, had been photographed on the sensitized plate of his memory—that plate on which the negatives of the past were but filmy shadows. Now, of them all, the same Garrison was on the sky-line of ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... they know—how could they dream the truth—or descry the hidden skeleton at the festival, wreathed in flowers and veiled with glittering, filmy draperies, which yet put forth its bony fingers to beckon on and ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... story of the slow consuming bitterness of years spoke through those fixed and filmy eyes. Her son gave a sudden irrepressible sob. There was a faint lightening in the little wrinkled face, and the lips made a movement. He kissed her, and in that last moment of consciousness the mother almost forgave him his good clothes and ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the girl, who welcomed me with a smile. I had thought her pretty in her V.A.D. dress, but now, in a filmy black gown and with her hair no longer hidden by a cap, she was the most ravishing thing you ever saw. And I observed something else. There was more than good looks in her young face. Her broad, low ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... day a dewy morning in late August brings back the thought of Mary and those stolen meetings. I have the minutest recollection of the misty bloom upon the turf, and the ragged, filmy carpet of gossamer on either hand, of the warm wetness of every little blade and blossom and of the little scraps and seeds of grass upon my soaking and discolored boots. Our footsteps were dark green upon the dew-grey grass. And I feel the same hungry freshness again at the thought ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... clustering round a palm here and there. Often they are made to look extra mean by a noble "cottonwood," or Bombax (Pentandrium), standing on its stalwart braces like an old sea-dog with parted legs; extending its roots over a square acre of soil, shedding filmy shade upon the surrounding underwood, and at all times ready, like a certain chestnut, to shelter a ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... itself. There was a vivid color running like ribbons through the crowds, for it was nearly nine o'clock and the doors of offices and shops and business houses were open to women as to men. Overhead a yellow sun shone in a pale filmy sky and the air was both warm and sharp. The doves ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... and prominent and was carried stiffly above the high stock and immaculate, starched shirt-ruffles. Her figure, as she leaned against the chair's high back, was slender and girlish,—childish, almost, in its low-necked, short-waisted, slim-skirted, "Empire" dress, of some filmy stuff, the pale yellow of a Marshal Niel rose. Her face was a pure oval with delicate, regular features. Her reddish-brown hair, parted in the middle, was piled on top of her small head, and airy little curls hung down on her brow on either side of the part. Her eyes—the color ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... that weren't the reflections of stars. Above these two flecks of light was perched a battered old leghorn hat after the style affected in the music halls of those days. Floating out back of this hat on the water was a long wavery coil of filmy hair, the face was shaded, but two long slim arms were thrust out of the water toward me, and following these arms down a bit I was shocked and surprised to find that further than the hat the young lady below me was apparently innocent of garments. Now I believe in going out with the ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... clear, crisp morning with a sparkle of frost on jetty and breakwater. The English Channel stretched flashing like a living sheet of glass to the filmy line marking the coast of France, as serene and beautiful in its calm as it is savage and cruel in its anger. It was high tide; but only a gentle murmur came from the little waves that idly beat upon the shore in front ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... his stirrups and swept his glance over the landscape, feasting his eyes on the note of warmth in the bloom of the peach—a blossom unknown to his more northern clime, on the soft brown of the pastures, and on the filmy blue of the distant hills melting into the gray haze of the April morning. Suddenly a thrill shot through him and a fresh enthusiasm rose in his heart: with all this wealth of color about him, what ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... was brilliantly lighted, and he was shrinking noiselessly into his study at the back when he heard his name called from the drawing-room threshold and saw his wife standing there while she put on a long white evening cloak over a filmy effect of cream-coloured lace. She was a small, pretty woman, with a cloud of fluffy, artificially blonde hair and large, innocent, absolutely blank blue eyes. A year ago she had resembled, if one might imagine ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... Don's cousin. She stood in the doorway. Her long, filmy white summer dress fell nearly to her ankles. Her black hair was coiled on her head. In her bodice was a single red poinsettia blossom. As she stood motionless, her small slight figure framed against the dark background of the hall, ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... shown us that that Ether is not only as dense as iron, or a hundred or a thousand times denser, but millions of times denser than that metal; and yet it permeates all matter like a sieve. In Sir Oliver Lodge's words, "the Ether is so dense that matter by comparison is like a gossamer or a filmy imperceptible mist." We can, therefore, by again using our "Ghost" analogy, understand why matter cannot obstruct the Ether, or vice versa; there is no perceivable friction between them, unless, as I shall presently suggest, we ...
— Science and the Infinite - or Through a Window in the Blank Wall • Sydney T. Klein
... this son should be considered as the "Good King Wenceslaus" of our Christmas carol. Makes mention also of Sister Anne and her husband, Richard II of England. Tells about Susanna and the King. Introduces well-known names of those who pass in filmy pageant across the old historic Charles Bridge—John Nepomuk, John Hus, and others. Gives a fleeting vision of another native King, a great man, and of other rulers who had their day and passed on. Talks at some length of the river of Prague, the Vltava, and gives some of its reflections. Leads ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker |
