"Half-light" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... offers but few 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
... but impressive, pagan—as a granite god, or one of those broken pillars of Medinet Habu. Either because Jules Thessaly had moved nearer to him, or by reason of an optical delusion produced by the half-light, the space between them seemed to have grown less—not only physically, but spiritually. The curves of their astral selves were sweeping inward to a point of contact which Paul knew subconsciously would be electric, odic, illuminating. He felt the driving ...
— The Orchard of Tears • Sax Rohmer
... up before him towards that grim slit in the wall through which the dim half-light of the summer night vaguely entered. Her light figure became visible to him as she reached it. There came to him a swift memory of the butterfly-beauty that had so astounded him ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... through the half-light. Her features were turned in a direction that did not reveal them very well. What did she ...
— A Black Adonis • Linn Boyd Porter
... back to our room, where the brass of the pretty Meusian beds and the carved wood of the cupboards shine in the half-light. All these things have suffered through the rough use the soldiers put them to, but we have real comfort here. We have found table-implements and a dinner-service, and for two days running we made chocolate ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... foundation, and below in 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 life above goes ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... 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 sprawled face downward on the floor. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... defiance that was probably the remaining vestige of self-respect in an individual who had ceased to defy successfully anybody or anything. His clothes could scarcely be called shabby, at least they passed muster in the half-light, but one's imagination could not have pictured the wearer embarking on the purchase of a half-crown box of chocolates or laying out ninepence on a carnation buttonhole. He belonged unmistakably to that forlorn orchestra ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... hand and looked down at her, framing a commonplace reply. But for some reason the words lay unspoken upon his tongue. Alaire's informal greeting, her parted lips, the welcoming light in her eyes, had sent them flying. It seemed to him that the dim half-light which illumined this nook emanated from her face and her person, that the fragrance which came to his nostrils was the perfume of her breath, and at the prompting of these thoughts all his smothered longings rose as ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... come into being to bear him company, to haunt him. Yes, as he walked, followed always closely by Rip, and saw the tall iron gates of the Park, Apsley House, the long line of Piccadilly, all uncertain, gentle, reduced to a whimsical mildness of aspect in the half-light of the dawning, he again recalled the fact, which he had mentioned that night to Doctor Levillier, of people watching an invalid who had seen, at the precise moment of dissolution, the soul escaping furtively from its fleshy prison like a flame, which was immediately lost in the air. ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... close over the wilderness. Where the sun had hung 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 the ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... 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 Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... removed the nice white kid glove from her right hand, and extending one small taper forefinger, rubbed it over the surface of the black-walnut tree; then she pointed meaningly at the piece of furniture, which plainly, even in the half-light, disclosed an unhousewifely streak. She also showed the dusty forefinger to the other lady, and they ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... pleasant after-dinner hour, and I was on the veranda for a quiet smoke. The Old Cattleman had just thrown down his paper; the half-light of the waning sun was a bit too dim for his ...
— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis
... and then at Burnaby. "Oh, no! I'm not cut, thanks!" Her eyes held a pained embarrassment. He caught the look, and her eyelids flickered and fell before his gaze, and then, as the footman repaired the damage, she sank back once more into the half-light beyond the radiance of the candles. "How shy she is!" thought Burnaby. "So many of these English women are. She's an important woman in her own right, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... 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 dreadful joy; it looked ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the garden gate (it was a tall wicket-gate through which you could get a peep at the garden) he undid the padlock, and in the half-light saw a tall holly-hock stretching itself across the entrance as if barring the way. "The garden is ours—mine and the rest of the flowers," it seemed to say. "Why do you come to disturb our peace?—you who ...
— Tom, Dot and Talking Mouse and Other Bedtime Stories • J. G. Kernahan and C. Kernahan
... thank you," faltered the old man. "I try to do my duty." And with another wistful glance at Violet, who looked very sweet and youthful in the half-light, he ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... 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 I to find myself alone; even the Indian had vanished, though from ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... 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 ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... familiar note 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 ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... listening to 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 homely origins, that prosperity ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... change with the light. The paper is applied to the 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, ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... chair I had shown him when I brought him in, and in the half-light of one gas-burner in the chandelier he looked, with his rough, clean clothes, and his slouch hat lying in his lap, like some sort of decent workingman; his features, refined by the mental suffering he had undergone, and the pallor of a complexion so seldom exposed to the open air, gave him the ...
— A Pair of Patient Lovers • William Dean Howells
... 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 ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... to investigate 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 ...
— Crayon Portraiture • Jerome A. Barhydt
... 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 ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... got into her attic that night she found that her deal box had been carried up and placed in one corner, and as she began to undress in the half-light she caught sight of something else which certainly had not been there before. Something standing in the window twisted and prickly, but to her most pleasant to look upon. Could it really be the cactus? She went up to it, half afraid to find that she was mistaken. No, it was not fancy, the ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... find a good sensible girl who had seen at last the vanity of all those things; half-light in the rooms; surrounded by the works of her favourite poets, and all that sort of thing. I say to myself: I must just run in and see the dear wise child, and encourage her in her good resolutions. . . And I fall into the middle of an intime lunch-party. For I suppose ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... hour or two of tensity, it was a relief to be face to face with my man, I able to read his, if I could, he able to read mine. It was only in the grey half-light of his hole in the rocks, but, at least, we should look each other in the eyes, as men wish to do when they are acting honestly towards each other, even if later ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... dazzling and bathed in tears, while she embraced 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
... his eyes, and in the soft half-light the girl's face was bent above him, dark and sweet and beautiful—near, so near that her breath was warm upon his lips. He said her name again in an ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... which was a mere matter of strength—and they touched her fancy. Toil, now that she was free of it, seemed even a more desolate thing than when she was part of it. She saw it through a mist of fancy—a pale, sombre half-light, which was the essence of poetic feeling. Her old father, in his flour-dusted miller's suit, sometimes returned to her in memory, revived by a face in a window. A shoemaker pegging at his last, a blastman seen through a narrow window in ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... upon me with his cavernous sockets and his projecting grin as he went by, I thought I would not detain him. He was hardly gone when I heard the clacking again, and another one issued from the shadowy half-light. This one was bending under a heavy gravestone, and dragging a shabby coffin after him by a string. When he got to me he gave me a steady look for a moment or two, and then rounded to and backed up ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I'll trap your trapper and spy your spy, and Nor'-Wester your H. B. C.! You come down to the sand between the forest and the beach in about an hour and I'll have news for you," and he brushed past me with his arms full of something I could not see in the half-light. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... 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
... for dreams. The one excogitated in spring-time, when Nature was taking her break-of-day drowse, previous to getting up and going about business; the other suggestive of Nature indulging in a half-light reverie in a sort of crimson and scarlet dressing-gown, previous to putting on her night-cap and going to bed, after a hard summer's work. The one reminding of a land where it is always afternoon of a day in the last of June, ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice
... 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 ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... that I have loved, I close your eyes, And smooth your quiet brow, and fold your thin dead hands. The grey veils of the half-light deepen; colour dies. I bear you, a light burden, to the ...
— The Collected Poems of Rupert Brooke • Rupert Brooke
... while now the herd of goats that had scampered away into the darkness recovered from their panic and came slowly back one by one, to form a circle round the fire, where they stood, long-horned, shaggy, and full-bearded, looking in the half-light like so many satyrs of the classic times, blinking their eyes and watching the little feast as if awaiting their time to be invited to ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... don't care." And then confronting her, their faces not a foot apart, for by now she had got to her feet, his hands gripped together and shaking, his teeth clenched, his eyes glowing there in the half-light of the auditorium, almost like an animal's, he demanded, "Can't you see what's the matter with me? Haven't you seen ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... The half-light lent the old quire's walls a rare beauty. A great peace hung over them. Perhaps it was of them. For a little we strolled, ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... 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 Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... from 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 might be really awake now, watching his quarry from ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... away downstairs to the outer door again. This time he ran out upon the porch and down the lawn and orchard, in the early half-light, to the willow path by the brook. He dashed along this path to its end and back again, as if he must in some way give expression to his relief from the tension of the night. But he was back and waiting impatiently long before he received his ...
— The Indifference of Juliet • Grace S. Richmond
... barn. There was still only dusky half-light. He pulled the doors almost shut behind him, leaving only a four-inch gap to see through. Now the car was safely out of sight and there was no sign that any ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... the 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 ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... along her side. The parts which were left uncovered, the face, the neck, the shoulders, and the arms, were extremely luminous, and the stile had reproduced most effectively the glitter of the embroidery in the half-light and the mysterious quality of the symbols. A tall white hound, Famulus, brother to the one which lays its head on the knee of the Countess of Arundel in Rubens' picture, stretched his muzzle towards the lady, guarding her slumbers, and was designed ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... half-light of the solitary hall-lamp the white-and-gold door between the curving halves of the stairway stood open on to the blackness of the unlighted ball-room. At the threshold appeared Estelle, and stood with folded arms until the servant who answered the bell had ...
— Aurora the Magnificent • Gertrude Hall
... me to go to Sutherlandtown. I will live here. And do not expect to keep up your intimacy with the Zabels. There is no tie of affection remaining between James and myself, but if I am to shed that half-light over your home which is all I can promise and all that you can hope to receive, then keep me from all influence but your own. That this in time may grow sweet and dear to me is my earnest prayer to-day, for you are worthy of a ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... open," she said. He turned, and saw very clearly, against the half-light, her startled eyes. Her hands were pressed against her dress and holly had fallen at her feet. He saw, too, that the nursery door ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... Men upon an August evening, till they came in the half-light upon something which might have been rocks or might have been ruins—grey lumps against the moon: they were the houses of a little town. A sort of gulf, winding like a river gorge, and narrower than a column of men, was the street that brought us in. But just as we feared that we should ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... more likely than that Matilda, in her amazement, should reveal the house's secret? But the half-light of the room was a very obliging ally against such ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... sensible; our path is very hard and cruel, but it does not separate us; we tread it together, always together, Jack." He struggled to speak; she held him close, and laid her head against his breast, contented, thoughtful, her eyes dreaming in the half-light of France reconquered, of noble deeds and sacrifices, of the great bells of churches thundering God's praise to a humble, thankful nation, proud in its faith, generous in its victory. As she lay dreaming close to the man she loved, a sudden tumult ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... 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 ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... In the 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
... so strangely after that that in the half-light which the loopholes afforded I tried in vain to read her meaning. 'Why did you come?' she cried at length, breathing quickly. 'You, of all men? Why did you come? He was no friend of yours, ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... were faintly and subtly mysterious. He inhaled carefully, swallowing into his lungs perfume and the not unpleasant scent of many cigarettes. He caught the glance of a dark young beauty sitting alone in a closed taxicab. Her eyes in the half-light suggested night and violets, and for a moment he stirred again to that half-forgotten remoteness of ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... I could picture her there behind me, the wind whipping the color to her cheeks and playing with her hair, her eyes bright and gay in the half-light. Save for the steady plodding of the horse, it was very still. I fancied that she had leaned nearer, that her shoulder was touching mine, that I could feel her breath on my cheek. Then she spoke, and her voice ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... thinking they would freeze standing outside in the wintry wind, good naturedly opened the door and admitted Mary Anderson to Paradise—or what seemed like it to her—the empty benches of the dress circle, the dim half-light, the mysterious horizon of dull green curtain, beyond which lay Fairyland. Here for two or three hours she sat entranced, till the peanut boy made his appearance to herald the approach of the glories of the evening. From that date ...
— Mary Anderson • J. M. Farrar
... Entering in the half-light, the count had paused at the back of the stage, for he hesitated to interrupt the quarrel. But Bordenave caught sight of him and ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... the path, sprang a furry gray creature, supple, fluffy, indescribably formless and immense in that deceptive half-light. ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... letting the pit gape under his nose as he entered the bank. Fergus glanced over his shoulder, saw the other hurrying, and hurried himself in order to take up a good position for seeing the cashier's face. He was in the middle of the treacherous floor before he perceived that it was not Macbean in the half-light behind the counter, but a good-looking man whom ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... The huge pavilion slowly yielded up, Through those black foldings, that which housed therein. High on a nightblack horse, in nightblack arms, With white breast-bone, and barren ribs of Death, And crowned with fleshless laughter—some ten steps— In the half-light—through the dim dawn—advanced The monster, and then paused, and spake ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... 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 Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 2 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... the red morning half-light, folding his big hands across his mailed chest, Leonidas looked from one to another of the little circle. His voice was still in unemotional gutturals when he delivered the longest ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... first impression was so sweet that I could only sigh. A sort of smoky-grey, silvery-soft, half-light, half-mist, enveloped me on all sides. At first I made out nothing: I was dazzled by this azure brilliance; but little by little began to emerge the outlines of beautiful mountains and forests; a lake lay at my ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... sofa and the two ladies, Calyste heard the words confusedly. He seated himself in an arm-chair and looked furtively toward the marquise. In the soft half-light he saw, reclining on a divan, as if a sculptor had placed it there, a white and serpentine shape which thrilled him. Without being aware of it, Felicite had done her friend a service; the marquise was much superior to the unflattered portrait Camille had drawn ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... pupil Carlo Raimondi, the bearer of a name illustrious in the annals of engraving, we owe a striking portrait of Toschi. The master is represented on his seat upon the scaffold in the dizzy half-light of the dome. The shadowy forms of saints and angels are around him. He has raised his eyes from his cartoon to study one of these. In his right hand is the opera-glass with which he scrutinises the details of distant groups. The upturned face, with its expression of contemplative ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... day-through, and now she possessed herself again. She grew quiet and silent, and even solemn. But Pete rattled on with cheerful talk about the day's doings. At the doors of the houses on the road as they passed, people were standing in the half-light to wave them salutations, and Pete sent back his answers in shouts and laughter. Turning the bridge they saw a little group at ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... Twilight remained, a fairy half-light in which all things looked much more charming than they really were. And Don Loris, reduced to peevish sputtering by pure mystery, summoned Thal to him. It should be remembered that Don Loris knew nothing of the disappearance of the spaceboat from his neighbor's land. He knew ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... He ended abruptly and thrust his head into the car, his eyes questing hers in the half-light; the chauffeur with his engine going looked ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... 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 ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... room, darkened against the midsummer heat, shimmered dimly in a transparent half-light, the vivid life of its bright chintz, its occasional brass, its clean, daring spots of crimson and purple flowers, subdued into a fabulous, half-seen richness. There was not a sound. The splendid heat of the early ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... voice. Its owner lurched forward from the corner in which she had been crouching, into the half-light cast by ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... heavy glooms. The light breaks through everywhere. The forms of the trees are light and piny; the red soil is seen, the roots of the trees, the broken turf, the sandy ground. All the colors are delightfully broken up in the mysterious half-light which confuses the outlines of every object, without making them shadowy. Such a picture one might see with half-shut eyes in a sunny wood, if one had more poetry than prose in one's head, and were well read ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 88, February, 1865 • Various
... as the subject of his comment receded into the hazy half-light of the plain, where his horse ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... bear it. I couldn't bear to be a failure with Latimer listening, though out there in that queer half-light I couldn't see him at all, but could only make out the couch where I ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... hand, lounging-chairs, suited to the length or shortness of any back; rococo photograph stands, framing either a great many men, or a few men in a great many attitudes; soothing pictures—decollete Venuses, Love's greuze heads—tied up with rose-ribbon, and a sleepy half-light. On a small table at the owner's elbow, a blue-velvet jeweler's case stands open. On its white-satin lining my long-sighted eyes enable me to decipher the name of Hunt and Roskell; and it does not need any long sight to observe the solid breadth of the gold band bracelet, ...
— Nancy - A Novel • Rhoda Broughton
... Wotan, wanted. Checked by Fricka, he revokes his command to Brunnhilda, and goes off cursing fate. Siegmund and Sieglinda enter, flying before Hunding; Sieglinda faints, and at last sleeps; and then Brunnhilda steps forward from among the rocks in the gloomy half-light—a stern, imposing, indeed an awful, figure, the herald of death, seen only by warriors about to die. The Fate theme sounds from the orchestra, and another melody, out of which nearly the whole scene is woven, is heard, and then, to a simple chord—supernatural, ghostly in ...
— Wagner • John F. Runciman
... in.—Oh, bless you, Binkie!' The little terrier thrust Torpenhow's door open with his nose and came out to take possession of Dick's chair. The door swung wide unheeded, and Dick across the landing could see Bessie in the half-light making her little supplication to Torpenhow. She was kneeling by his side, and her hands were clasped ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... to Baronmead with all her healthy soul. As they sped up the long drive they were joined by a galloping horseman, who shouted to Bertie to put on speed and flogged his animal furiously when the car drew ahead. He looked like a demon to Dot in the half-light—a black imp mounted on a black mare riding to perdition. She was glad to ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... 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 ...
— A Manifest Destiny • Julia Magruder
... worse. The key was found, and he had then to bend his great height to squeeze through the little door. Once inside, he was at the corner of the Saint Margaret Chapel and could see, in the faint half-light, the rosy colours of the beautiful Saint Margaret window that glimmered ever so dimly upon the rows of cane-bottomed chairs, the dingy red hassocks, and the brass tablets upon the grey stone walls. He walked through, picking his way carefully in the dusk, saw for an instant the ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... had 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; ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... It is not my fault!" these grown-up children groaned. All through the five acts, which took place in a perpetual half-light—forests, caves, cellars, death-chambers—little sea-birds struggled: hardly even that. Poor little birds! Pretty birds, soft, pretty birds.... They were so afraid of too much light, of the brutality ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... 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
... they beheld a slim figure bowed upon its knees in an agony of abasement before a scarred and dingy door. Even as they stared, the slender, girlish figure sobbed again, and, with a sudden, yearning gesture, lifted a face, pale in the half-light, and kissed that battered door; thereafter, weeping still, she rose to her feet and turned, but seeing Spike, stood very still all at once and with hands clasped ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... half-light To cloak with mortal an immortal sight? With uninformed desire, Shorn passion, gentle mind, contented fire, Ignorant love; to run But with the little journeys of the sun, And at evening sleep With birds and beasts, and stars rocked ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... arrow-slits of windows at the east end. There was little wealth of marble there, I trow; little time had those fighting men for stone-smoothing. Albeit, one noted many semblances of flowers even in the dim half-light, and here and there the faces of BRAVE men, roughly cut enough, but grand, because the hand of the carver had followed his loving heart. Neither was there gold wanting to the altar and its canopy; and above the low pillars of the ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... Stanislaus went to the bed of one of them, named Pacifici, who was rather particularly devoted to him, and who afterwards became a Franciscan. He shook Pacifici and woke him. The servant rubbed his eyes sleepily, then gazed in astonishment at the brilliant figure standing in the half-light beside his bed. What was the Lord Stanislaus doing, dressed in this unusual finery, at such ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... then, standing in the gloomy half-light of this squalid room, with the slanting golden sunshine which peeped in through the tiny west window outlining her delicate silhouette and touching her smooth fair hair ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... little porch of the house, packed closely around Barney and Sam, who said nothing, but followed Barney like his shadow. If the sun had been shining, it might not have happened as it did; but there was a semi-obscurity, a weird half-light shed by the thick sky and falling snow, which somehow encouraged the enraged ruffians, who pounded on the door just as the pleading voice of the ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... that 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 the buttons, nor could quickly ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... grew pale, and thanked the half-light for concealment, or he must have noted. Who that "other lady" was, possessed for me no interest, and I ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... sat there behind lowered blinds in the cool half-light of the music-room, he could feel the hot blood of resentment and ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... this to David Jenison a few hours later in the Portman library. They sat alone in the half-light. Stanfield's married sister had taken Christine off earlier in the evening, to a concert. Mrs. Braddock, in a spirit of whimsicality, forbore mentioning the appearance of David to the girl, planning ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... reduced us very quickly, for all practical purposes, to a company of three. He lowered one of the upper beds, climbed into it, stretched himself out and lay in silence staring at the carriage-roof. His body was a shadow in the half-light, touched once and again by the gesture of the swinging lamp, that swept him out of darkness and back into it again. The remaining three of us did not during either that evening or the next day make much progress. At times there would of course be tea, and then the two Sisters who ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... toward her. In her face there was a curious bewilderment that made me fear lest, for all my mask, for all my unnatural intonations, and for all the room's half-light, my worshipped mistress had come near to recognizing this ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell
... entering, it is difficult to distinguish any thing in the half-light. The narrow Gothic casements of the whole floor are closed, both those toward the street and those facing inward upon the inner court. The outer wooden shutters are also closely fastened. The marchesa would consider it a sacrilege to allow light or even outer air to penetrate in these rooms, ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... half-light of the corridor lay a woman, most superbly formed. She was dark, and the thick masses of her hair, ready for the hairdresser, fell in a tangle over her beautifully chiselled features and full, rounded shoulders and neck. A scarlet bathrobe, loosened ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... the stove, which shone red in the early half-light of dawn. We shivered and rubbed our hands. Then we fell into tramps' gossip about the ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp |
