"Intentness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and peering anxiously into the midst of every crowd and listening with keen intentness, the little girl threaded her way to the northern limit of the captain's accustomed "beat." But there was no sign nor sound of him upon the eastern side of the thoroughfare, and, crossing to the more crowded western side, she crept southward, step by step, scanning every ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... appalling silence to my appeal. It was not pleasant to have twelve masked faces turned upon you and to see twelve pairs of vindictive Italian eyes fixed with fierce intentness upon your face. But I stood as a debonair soldier should, and I could not but reflect how much credit I was bringing upon the Hussars of Conflans by the dignity of my bearing. I do not think that anyone could have carried himself better under such difficult circumstances. ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her other hand and thus stood beside him with slender neck stretched slightly forward, her lips parted, a look of intentness expressed in the whole of ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of spirit between forces that produced symbols so different as that. Granted that both images are extravagances, are perversions of the pure creed, it must be a real divergence which could produce such opposite extravagances. The Buddhist is looking with a peculiar intentness inwards; the Christian is staring with a frantic intentness outwards. If we follow that clue steadily we ...
— Modern Religious Cults and Movements • Gaius Glenn Atkins
... moderate yet so cruel, so well-reasoned and yet so false, because of its glosses and omissions, the huddled Ayesha seemed to listen with a fierce intentness. Yet she made no answer, not a single word, not a sign even; she who had said her say and ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... this time he was already filled with a new idea; hearkening with a rapt intentness, his head on one side, his face puckered; and he struck me rudely, to make me hold my peace. Then he ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume XXI • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Taggarak would be to weaken them. They were the climax, and silence was golden. Throughout the eloquent appeal of the chief, Deerfoot stood with his hands idly folded behind him, his eyes fixed upon the face of Taggarak, whose pose gave a good view of his features, and listening in the very intentness of his soul. When the chief had uttered his last word he gathered his blanket about his shoulders and strode out of the Big Lodge, looking neither to the right nor left, and again failing to notice his wife and little boy, who sat on the ground ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... but instantly recognized his poise. He knelt with unexplicable intentness. He too saw the ghastly wound and its grim connection with the rusted pick. And he bent, slowly, like a man who is trying to control an unwonted eagerness, lifted the pick ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... captain of the track team, and holding the interstate record for the high jump, in the all-suffusing brightness of being twenty-one. Yet sometimes, in the pauses of his work, the young man frowned and looked at the ground with an intentness which suggested that even twenty-one might have ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... do you expect to keep the office shut, sir?" inquired the clerk, respectfully, but still with a troubled air, and with serious eyes with the unswerving intentness of ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... example of him whose vision is fixed on carnal instead of on spiritual things. Yet he also typifies the man who in this life consistently refuses to see aught that is lofty, and fixes his eyes with solemn intentness only on that which is vile and debasing. Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck-rake; and there are ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... of reaching across the barrier of this critical silence and he was about to rise and leave when he happened to look about and see Sophie Carr standing within arm's length, gazing at him with a peculiar intentness, a mild look of surprise upon her vivid young ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... our engagement," he thinks, and feels a certain pang of disappointment that it should be so. As he walks, rather dejectedly, into a last conservatory, he is startled to find Marcia there alone, gazing with silent intentness out of the window ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... intelligence,—of great human depth and richness, but special nevertheless. Of a particular order of truths you are an incomparable champion; but always you are the champion and on the field, always your genius has its visor down, and glares through a loop-hole with straitened intentness of vision. A particular sort of errors and falsities you can track with the scent of a blood-hound, and with a speed and bottom not surpassed, if equalled; but the Destinies have put the nose of your genius to the ground, and sent it off for good and all upon a particular trail. You ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... is an intimate friend of yours, is he not?" she asked carelessly. Her voice was very full and rich, but she spoke slowly, as though she were accustomed to weigh each word. It struck Malcolm that she listened with some intentness to ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... returned the girl, a smile struggling about her beautiful mouth, in spite of the singular and engrossing intentness which caused her cheeks to flush and lighted her eyes with a brilliancy that was almost dazzling—"I have observed both, and have thought the last remarkable for a man of ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... while the angry blood flashed from brow to throat. Her lover saw it, and for the moment a strange intentness was in his gaze. But immediately he smiled, as a man would at some horrible phantom of his own creating, and continued ...
— Agatha's Husband - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik (AKA: Dinah Maria Mulock)
... keep Benny from knowing," she said. She ate it, nearly all, then looked around, below her, with a strange intentness, as one who says good-bye. The bell tolled the hour. Unutterable pain was in its voice,—may-be dumb spirits like Lot's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... any one of these matters; his knowledge is merely that of an average good citizen. He went from one subject to the other, studying them. His boy followed close beside him, looking where his father looked,—if with a lesser interest at the charts, with as great an intentness at the photographs. As they made their way about the room given over to the exhibit, they talked, the boy asking questions, the father ...
— The American Child • Elizabeth McCracken
... dark eyes glowed upon him with a sombre intentness. "You know the old proverb which says, 'It's a long lane which ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... waited several minutes, listening, a faint smile curling her mouth with intentness and satisfaction. No, this time he wouldn't come back—nor next time, maybe—but there ...
— Young People's Pride • Stephen Vincent Benet
... sought the answer, a clear sign appeared as it were by the way, and unsought. Julian was watching haggardly. He snarled a question at Jim. His cook-boy's big round eyes showed very big and very round just now. He was watching with painful intentness. ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... of the time when in my heart too that light burned bright with blessing... Listen... and I will fancy thee sitting before me, gazing up at me with those eyes—so fond yet stern almost in their intentness. O eyes, never to be forgotten! On whom are they fastened now? Who folds in his heart thy glance—that glance that seems to flow from depths unknown even as mysterious springs—like ye, both clear and dark—that ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... the animal stepped forward and moved to a tree where it had evidently been accustomed to find its feed, for it snorted impatiently and shook itself as it sniffed round the trunk. But Durham had no eyes for it; he was watching, with fascinated intentness, the figure ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... or not. It was while this discussion was in progress, Leaver forcing himself to attend sufficiently to make intelligent replies, that Charlotte Ruston suddenly turned and looked at him. He looked straight back at her, a peculiar intentness growing in ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... convinced him that something more than ordinary was amiss, that some danger more serious than ordinary threatened. He felt no surprise therefore when, a little later, she arrested her sobbing, raised her head, and with suspended breath and tear-stained face listened with that scared intentness which ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... it—little Tom Morgan, Dan's brother-in-arms, the General's seventeen-year-old brother—and there he stands leaning against a tree, full in the light of the fire, a handsome, gallant figure—a song like a seraph's pouring from his lips. One bearded soldier is gazing at him with curious intentness, and when the song ceases, lies down with a suddenly troubled face. He has seen the "death-look" in the boy's eyes—that prophetic death-look in which he has unshaken faith. The night deepens, figures roll up in blankets, quiet comes, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... among her pots and pans, making a ritual of her household duties, so that they acquired a moral significance; I did not suppose that she was clever or could ever be amusing, but there was something in her grave intentness which excited my interest. Her reserve was not without mystery. I wondered why she had married Dirk Stroeve. Though she was English, I could not exactly place her, and it was not obvious from what rank in society she sprang, what had been her upbringing, or how she had lived ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... ought to have followed with the same intentness as Heinz the mass celebrated for the soul of her own mother, but she could no longer succeed in doing so. Besides, she was denied the privilege of looking freely and often at him upon whose movements depended the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... him with a keen, set, impersonal intentness in her gaze which he could not understand. "Then you are sure she does not care enough for you to marry you? She threw you over because ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... delighted to have found the manola, paid little attention to the preliminaries of the fight, and the first bull had already ripped up a horse before he bestowed a single look upon the arena. He gazed at the young girl by his side, with an intentness that would doubtless have embarrassed her had she perceived it. He thought her more charming than ever; and certainly a more perfect type of Spanish beauty had never sat upon the blue granite benches ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... she was suddenly conscious of the man who had been talking to Madame Selarne. He had drawn a little on one side and he was watching the young soldier with a curious intentness. She turned back to her nephew and touched ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of the young man directed toward the gallery with such intentness and for so long a time that he endeavored to trace that earnest scrutiny to its object. The detective was not exactly certain, but he finally picked out a very handsome young lady who occupied ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... of it; but he was afraid to enter an eating-house, or to even approach the "snack-stand" on the edge of the circus lot. For a long time he stood afar off in the darkness, his legs trembling, his mouth twitching, his eyes bent with pathetic intentness upon the single pie and hot sandwich stand that remained near the sideshow tent, presided over by a kind-faced, sleepy ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... her gaze on the furniture, the objects of virtu, the pictures, with eager intentness, so that she might be able to carry away the impressions of them in her memory. The Marechale's portrait was half-hidden behind a curtain. But the gilding and the white spaces of the picture, which showed their ...
— Sentimental Education, Volume II - The History of a Young Man • Gustave Flaubert
... be wound up to an extreme tension of excitement—she forgot all her troubles in listening with painful intentness to the rush and roar of the train through the darkness. The lights of passing stations and signal-posts gleamed like scattered and flying stars—there was the frequent shriek of the engine-whistle,—the serpent-hiss of escaping steam. She peered through the window—all was ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... him the nature of my claim, he scanned me with great intentness. His austere and inflexible brow afforded me little room to hope for success, and this hopelessness was confirmed by his silence and perplexity when Williams had ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... nourished, badly housed—working under conditions little favourable to play of the fancy or intentness of the mind—then was the time, Gissing found, to take down Forster ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... it was necessary to make quick and sure judgments. He had to read unreadable faces. He had to guess motives. He had to sense the coming of danger before it showed its face. And, watching them with close intentness, he understood that at least three of them were cheating at every opportunity. Henry, alone, was playing a square game; as for the heavy winner, Larry, Andrew had reason to believe that he was adroitly palming an ace now and then—luck ran too ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... turned often to the window with a glance both vigilant and eager, yet saw nothing but a tropical luxuriance of foliage scarcely stirred by the sultry air heavy with odors that seemed to oppress not refresh. He listened with the same intentness, yet heard only the clamor of voices, the tramp of feet, the chime of bells, the varied turmoil of a city when night is defrauded of its peace by being turned to day. He watched and waited for something; presently ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... included among the sights," Marie said, smiling, but with something of the "princess" air which—perhaps unconsciously—she always put on with her husband's cousin. Miss Jewett, making some polite and formal little answer, gazed with glittering intentness at her hostess and Mary Grant. Her eyes, in the thin, sallow face with its pointed chin, were so brilliantly intelligent that they seemed to have a life and individuality of their own, separate from the rest of her ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and outer being, as this one, of such nobleness in her way of thinking, such great intellectual capacity, and so free from the theological perplexities that enveloped me?" Let any one peruse, with all intentness, the lineaments of this portrait, and he will be impressed with the fact, that it is possible for woman to fulfil her mission, and become a true helpmeet. This woman was not a copy. She was not a cipher. She was ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... intentness as the hag singsonged on and on. Then a look of satisfaction came into his eyes and he smiled happily. Next his look changed to a nasty look of determination, and he abruptly got up, tossing a bank-note ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... suddenly, and was still; and a light breeze sprang up and set the reeds and bulrushes rustling. Rat, who was in the stern of the boat, while Mole sculled, sat up suddenly and listened with a passionate intentness. Mole, who with gentle strokes was just keeping the boat moving while he scanned the banks with care, ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... that there was something a little out of the common in the faces of nearly every one of them. The loiterers through life seemed absent. These people were relaxing freely enough,—laughing, talking, and making love,—but behind it all there seemed a note of seriousness, an intentness in their faces which seemed to speak of a career, of things to be done in the future, or something accomplished in the past. The woman who sat at the opposite table to me—tall, with yellow hair, and face as pale as alabaster—was a striking personality ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... oak plank from our sledge runners. It faces north, and at the intersection of the upright and the crosspiece there is a large "R" cut in the wood. When I went up to see it, soon after our arrival this last time, the cross was leaning toward the north, as if from the intentness of its three years' ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... don't think we can prove anything by your father, for he's just been telling me that there was no one in the place but himself. No one came in, and he was quite alone—" Ranson had begun speaking eagerly, but either his own words or the intentness with which Cahill received them caused him ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... recommended a different plan, which they adopted, and placing his six friends and several royal gamekeepers in Indian file he started at their head. They followed him without speaking and watched him closely as, with an intentness quite un-French, he bent down to see farther through the trees, examined the branches for newly-broken twigs, the displaced stones, the crushed mosses, disturbed grass, and soft places of the ground, and the little indications read and looked ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... interminable length of time, he tore away a layer of pine boards and released a double row of screw-heads. Then he crouched low down in the rectangular cavern which he had fashioned with his spade, struck a match, and peered with a narrow-eyed and breathless intentness ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... to her improvised shack and wrapped herself in her blanket. Brent gazed with a sort of hypnotized intentness on the wildness of the picture before him—an orgy of fire, wind and water. Through the wet mountains the wind shrieked and buffetted until ancient trees, made brittle by long freezing, went down. At his back, beyond the boom, sounded the dirge of the swollen waters running ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck
... ever he kept his eyes and ears open and his mouth shut. Seeing Lady Arabella gliding up the stairs towards his master's room, he took it for granted that she was there for no good, and doubled his watching intentness and caution. ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... little pallid. But they were all such tender faces, so soft in outline, so fresh and delicate in texture and colour. They had soft credulous mouths. Some glanced sideways at one another; some listened with a forced intentness. The expression of one good-looking boy, sitting in a corner scat, struck the bishop as being curiously defiant. He stood very erect, he blinked his eyes as though they smarted, his lips were compressed bitterly. And then it seemed to ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... throughout. Narcissus had no bone-distances, as artists say, and his hair was in crisp curls, good for the sculptor. No one ever needed to get a pair of scissors to snip it. But though anyone might have marvelled at Adrian Torrens's seeming Narcissus-like intentness on his own manifold image, he could never have surmised that cruel blindness was its apology. He could never have guessed, from anything in their seeming, that the long perspective of gazing orbs, vanishing into nothingness, were not ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... Harrison, besides his intentness and earnestness, was a cheerful and hopeful man. He had a fine taste for music, and organised and led the choir of the village church, which attained a high degree of perfection. He invented a curious monochord, which was not less accurate than his clocks in the mensuration of time. ...
— Men of Invention and Industry • Samuel Smiles
... time reaping a profit to his own State. Has he told you anything of this mule deal he is forcing Governor Faulkner to hold up on some others who want to do a service to France?" As she questioned me, the beautiful Madam's eyes became much narrower and I could observe that she watched me with intentness for any sign of intelligence. I gave ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... followed her words, Monck's hand left hers. He lay still looking at her, but with that steely intentness that told her nothing. She could not have said whether he were vitally interested in the matter or not when ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... is, beside this, the peculiar province of witchcraft. And in these pretended hags the faculty is no longer desultory and erratic. Conscious of their power, they are supposed to have subjected it to system and discipline. They apply its secret and trackless energy with an intentness and a vigour, which ordinary mortals may in vain attempt to emulate in an application of the force of inert matter, or of the different physical powers by means of which such stupendous effects have often been produced.—How ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... garden gate, and came in. When he came up near the seat where Henry and Rollo stood, he found the boys standing a step or two back from the flower-pot, both watching the hole with the utmost intentness. ...
— Rollo's Experiments • Jacob Abbott
... at him for a moment with an intentness which was indescribable. His black eyes seemed on fire with suspicion, with searchfulness. At last he let go the arm which he was clutching, ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that the witchery of moonlight had not served to exaggerate the sensitive, the almost miniature, beauty of her. If anything, its charm was greater there in the full glare of the electric chandelier, as she faced him, giving him glance for glance, quite undismayed by the intentness of ...
— The Brass Bowl • Louis Joseph Vance
... saw the eyes we used to see on the football field in New Haven, and even, it seemed to me for a moment, the little worried yet patient intentness I knew so well at school when some one of those tiny climaxes (that seemed so terrible then!) depended on him for a fair solution. They used to say so clearly, those honest eyes, that he hoped you agreed with ...
— Margarita's Soul - The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty • Ingraham Lovell
... I was still a cad. She eyed me, with a certain whiteness, a certain puzzled intentness, a certain fugitive wistfulness—a mute estimation that made me too conscious of her clear appraising gaze and rack my brain for some ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... by, and then twenty. Margaret bent steadily over her work, listening with covert intentness for the click of the street gate. Likely enough Richard had been unable to find any one to take charge of his hand-baggage. Presently Mr. Slocum could not resist the impulse to look at his watch. It was half past eight. He nervously unfolded The ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... beginning of grayness in the dark, wavy hair which covers his large, finely arched, and well-proportioned head. His forehead is high and broad, his gray eyes deep set under brows that come together and give intentness and fierceness to his ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Wells listened with an intentness that was revealed by the lines of his contracted brows, Mr. Stevens described how he had found Teeny-bits crouching in the shrubbery behind Gannett Hall and mentioned the newcomer's confusion ...
— The Mark of the Knife • Clayton H. Ernst
... vague memorial of the world of men below. From that, too, the color vanished, and those other lights began to shine which to some are the only lights of day. The skies dropped close upon the mountains and the silver seas like a vast face brooding with intentness. There was enchantment, mystery, and a living motion in its depths, the presence of all-pervading Zeus enfolding his starry children with the ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... made its own echo; she had no need to emphasise it even by a smile. But she watched him as it sunk into his consciousness with an intentness it took all his strength to sustain. Suddenly her bearing and expression changed. The few remains of sweetness in her face vanished, and even the allurement which often lasts when the sweetness is gone, disappeared in the energy which now took possession ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... ahead. Could it be illusion—their fiery intentness? She followed his glance.... The big woods—she knew them, had ridden by them many times—how deep and green they looked!... But what was the meaning of that set, inexorable line of his profile? What was he battling? That was her word, her portion. For hours, days, years she had been ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... interrogated, shook his head, as much as to say that all was over, and the boy flung himself on a chair and burst out sobbing. But one thing comforted him. In spite of the fact that he was worse, the sick man seemed to be slowly regaining a little intelligence. He stared at the lad with increasing intentness, and, with an expression which grew in sweetness, would take his drink and medicine from no one but him, and made strenuous efforts with his lips with greater frequency, as though he were trying to pronounce ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... words which followed, each cautiously exploring a way in toward a somewhat clearer understanding of the other, yet both becoming quickly convinced that they were not destined for ordinary acquaintanceship. To Miss Norvell observing her companion with shy intentness, this erect, manly young fellow with weather-browned, clean-shaven face and straightforward gray eyes seemed to evince a power of manhood she instinctively felt and surrendered to. His were those elements which a woman of her nature must instantly recognize—physical ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... with the intentness of her single eye, his every motion, her head swaying in unconscious sympathy. Although her body sat so stiff and awkward in the chimney-seat, her spirit, inspired with the grace of love, was dancing with Manetho's. But the body kept its place, ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... not answer, and Raven, striding along the road, listened with all possible intentness to hear whether husband and wife spoke together. He thought not, but he did hear the closing of ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... the man of extremes who spoke, and he spoke quite sincerely. Christina, however, neither answered him nor heard. Her eyes were fixed with a strange intentness upon him; her breath came and went as if she had run a race, and in ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... the telegraph clicked, and he pushed the damp, fresh paper away from him, and went immediately to the wires. The young man listened to the message with an expression of great intentness, and wrote rapidly. Moved by some unaccountable impulse, I softly rose and glanced over ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... kitchen after this delicious repast (which as usual mitigated somewhat the effects of the swill that was our official nutriment) we entered the cour. And we noticed at once a well-made figure standing conspicuously by itself, and poring with extraordinary intentness over the pages of a London Daily Mail which it was holding upside-down. The reader was culling choice bits of news of a highly sensational nature, and exclaiming from time to time: "You don't say! Look, ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... then that Von Gerhard proposed the thing that set us staring at him in amused wonder. He came over and stood looking down at us, his hands outspread upon the big library table, his body bent forward in an attitude of eager intentness. I remember thinking what wonderful hands they were, true indexes of the man's character; broad, white, surgeonly hands; the fingers almost square at the tips. They were hands as different from those slender, nervous, unsteady, ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... unconscious of the life that flowed on about him; sometimes he seemed to recognize Cherry, and would stare with painful intentness into her face, but after a few seconds his gaze would wander to the strange nurses, and the room that he had never known, and with a puzzled sigh he would close his eyes again, and drift back into his own strange world of pain, ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... presence completely while he lighted a fire and fried bacon and made coffee, but the hard set of his jaw and the cold intentness of his eyes proved how conscious he was of Buck's presence. He tried to eat just to show how calm he was, but the bread and bacon choked him. He could feel every nerve in his body quiver with the hatred he felt for the man, and the bitterness which the sight of him called up ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... a friend of yours?" gasped the Lay Reader. Already, if Flame could only have seen it, his head was cocked with sudden intentness towards the parlor door. "There is certainly something very strange about all this," he whispered a bit hectically. "I could almost have sworn that I heard a faint scuffle,—the ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... reflecting out loud, can't you?" said Stan. His smooth forehead wrinkled and a sudden cleft appeared between his eyebrows, witness of an unaccustomed intentness of thought. "Say, Pete; this partnership of ours isn't on the level. You put in half the work ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... the spectacle with a mind undisturbed, with a gentle philosophy inspired by an experience which he alone could appreciate. It was a wonderful sight. The effort, the haste, the almost insane intentness of these people seeking the yellow metal, the discovery of which was the whole bounds of their horizon. He felt that it was good to see them. Good that these untamed passions should be allowed full sway. He felt that such as these were the advance guard of all human enterprise. Theirs ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... across at the ruined facade, and saw that in one of its window-frames another dog stood: a large white pointer with one brown ear. He was an old grave dog, much more experienced than the others; and he seemed to be observing me with a deeper intentness. ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... drawn quite near to him, in her challenging coaxing intentness. He looked down at ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... voice, "Fine afternoon, Matron!" exclaim his followers. But they do not turn their heads. Each with his hand resting on the shoulder of the man in front they go steadily on, towards the concert-room, with an odd intentness, glancing neither to one side nor the other. For though, at their leader's cue, they have hailed the Matron, they have not seen her. ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... her calloused hand against her lips and stood listening with agonized intentness. But now the heavy, foggy silence had fallen again. At intervals came the long, faint wail of the fog-horn. There was no other sound. Even the old woman in the shadowy corner ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... assembled and the visitors had arrived, including Fyodor Pavlovitch, who was to stand god-father, he suddenly announced that the baby "ought not to be christened at all." He announced this quietly, briefly, forcing out his words, and gazing with dull intentness at the priest. ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... for the intellectual consciousness to grasp: because the right virtue of Art lies in a certain self-withdrawing power which catches the mind as from a distance, and cheats the forces of self-applause into abdication through intentness of soul. All which infers, moreover, that a full appreciation of any true work of art cannot be extemporized; for such a work has a thousand meanings, which open out upon the eye gradually, as the eye feeds and grows and kindles up to them: its virtue has to soak ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... ground and the mounting of the small black box upon it. She pointed her ears at it; tilted her head to one side and moved her nose up and down. I moved away from her several feet to take the picture. She eyed the kodak with such intentness that I invited her to come over and have a look at it. She came at once, turning her head and neck to one side to prevent the bridle-reins, which I had thrown upon the ground, from entangling her feet. Once by me, she looked the kodak and ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... the gloom of the high altar into a blaze of light. With a strange sense of completion I took my place next to the chair by which Lorimer, with bowed head, was kneeling, his eyes fixed with a strange intentness on the screen which separated the outer worshippers from the chapel or gallery which was set apart for the nuns. His lips moved from time to time spasmodically, in prayer or ejaculation: then as the jubilant organ burst ...
— The Poems And Prose Of Ernest Dowson • Ernest Dowson et al
... lay back in the chair and put the newspaper over his face again. Patsy and her father stared at one another with grave intentness. Then the Major drew out his ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... gasped Braden, searching the man's face with an intentness that betrayed his own fear that the prophecy would come true. Something had already told him that his grandfather would depend upon him for complete relief,—and it was that something that had gripped his heart when he entered the sick-room, and still gripped it with all ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... seen opened, was found in the oriel room on the seat of the chair sacred to the duke himself; and a cricket cap of Diavolo's was discovered on one of the tall candles which stood on the altar in the private chapel of the castle, as if it had been used as an extinguisher, A peculiar intentness was also observed in the expression of the children's countenances which was thought to betoken mischief, because always hitherto it had been noticed that when the gravity of their demeanour was most exemplary, the wickedness of the design ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... eyes to focus upon the Montgomerys with a new intentness. Before her escapade they had been accepted as a matter of course; now that she had demonstrated that the Montgomerys were subject to the temptations that beset all mankind, every one became curious as to the further definition of the family weaknesses. ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... and rude witticisms made the huge wagon a bouquet of smiling faces. Everybody laughed, except Bradley, who sat with intent eyes and steady lips, his sinewy brown hand holding the excited horses in place. This intentness and self-mastery lent a sort of majesty to his ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... first, order first, pledge yourself first; and then split your head in order to pay and to redeem! When chance aids you to accumulate, let the pile grow, out of mere perversity, and then scatter it royally! Play heartily! Play with the same intentness as you work! Live to the uttermost instant and to the last flicker of energy! Such was the spirit of Osmond Orgreave, and the spirit which reigned in the house generally, if not in every room ...
— Clayhanger • Arnold Bennett
... along like that, his head bent and his eyes fixed upon the ground, people often wondered whether he was thinking of anything at all, or whether such intentness did betoken a grave preoccupation. Sometimes they tested him. "What you thinkin' about, Jim?" one would ask him, when they met upon the road; but Jim never replied in any illuminating way. If he answered at all, it was only to query, ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... would be good for Justin, too, and was glad that he had been persuaded to go; yet she caught him looking at her with such strange intentness a couple of times during the dinner that it discomposed her oddly. It made her a little silent; she pondered over it after she had gone up, as usual, to the baby. Was there something wrong with her appearance? ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... and a white shirt with a fine diamond in the front of it, while there was a keen intentness behind the half-ironical smile in his somewhat colorless face. The whiteness of his long nervous fingers and the quickness of his gestures would also have stamped his as a being of different order from the slowly-spoken prairie ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... had descended from her car; her veil was raised, and she was gingerly picking at the mechanism with hands sheathed in canvas gloves. With apparent intentness she took out tools; small parts were inspected minutely. And yet, for all that, there was something unusual in her manner; every now and then she would lift her head, casually, so it seemed, and glance away across ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... "What do they matter—these boots and shirts and books?" He caught a few pictures from the wall and stuffed them into his pockets, and was about to plunge out into the dusk when Fan entered the room and stood looking at him with ominous intentness. ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... time, listening with painful intentness. Not another murmur came from the cabin. Sloan wiped his wet forehead and whispered shakily: "I wouldn't mind it so much if he'd curse and rave. But to sit like that, not making a sound—it ain't ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... minutes Lady Ruth said nothing. She was leaning back in the farthest corner of her chair, her head resting slightly upon her fingers, her eyes studying with a curious intentness the outline of Wingrave's pale, hard face. He himself, either unconscious of, or indifferent to her close scrutiny, had simply the air of a man possessed of an inexhaustible ...
— The Malefactor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was denied her, the palatial home where Leicester bowed in homage before Elizabeth. As a neglected, repudiated wife, creeping stealthily to the hearth where it was her right to reign, Amy turned her wan, woeful face to the audience, and, fixing her gaze with strange mournful intentness upon the eyes that watched her from the box, she seemed to throw her whole soul into the finest passage ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... draperies so often depicted as celestial. The sun sought into her face, revealing nothing but great purity of line and a clear pallor except where below the wide light blue eyes two ethereal shadows brushed themselves. Under the intentness of their gaze she made as if she would pass out without speaking; and the tender curves of her limbs, as she wavered, could not have been matched out of mediaeval stained glass. But her courage, or her conviction, came back to her at the door, and she ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... the current when the hoarse voice of the mate was heard ordering the ladder over the side. The preparation to receive the boat drew the attention of the crowd, and they stared at its occupants with an intentness which implied some deeper interest than mere curiosity; low words were exchanged, and some of the poor frightened creatures seemed to take on ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... his velocipede at a rate of speed altogether out of proportion to the effort put forth by his plump legs, bare and brown above his socks. From beneath the brim of his old sailor hat he looked on with solemn intentness. He was on excellent terms with the workmen, and often carried home a whole armful of treasures—odd-shaped pieces of wood, curly shavings, ...
— The Pleasant Street Partnership - A Neighborhood Story • Mary F. Leonard
... their god.' The strains of his heredity were very curiously, but very clearly, mingled. It may surprise some readers to find him speaking of 'the family evil, despondency,' but he spoke with knowledge. He inherited from his father not only a stern Scottish intentness on the moral aspect of life ('I would rise from the dead to preach'), but a marked disposition to melancholy and hypochondria. From his mother, on the other hand, he derived, along with his physical frailty, a resolute and cheery ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... touching the face of the cliff in its fall—the shadows of the mountain lay black on the mesquite flat. He gazed across that wide plain and the mesas climbing heavenward beyond it in a series of glowing steps. His face assumed a peculiar intentness as he watched the distant smoke column; it was the intentness of a man who is reading under difficulties. In dot and dash he spelled it as it rose—the tidings of those two prospectors who traveled ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... Holmes, in all over 200 words. They were, all but two or three, pronounced correctly. She now, six years afterward, converses quite fluently with people who know nothing of the manual alphabet by placing a couple of fingers on the speaker's lips, her countenance showing great intentness and brightening as she catches the meaning. Anybody ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... "Between us, we pried old Bayweather loose from his soft soap, pretty neatly," and gave the man before him a look of friendly understanding. He was a little startled, for an instant, by the expression in the other's bright eyes, which he found fixed on him with an intentness almost disconcerting. "Does he think I'm trying to put something over on him?" he asked himself with a passing astonishment, "or is he trying to put something over on me?" Then he remembered that everyone had spoken of Marsh's eyes as peculiar; it was ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... friend, remember me. I was a witness to your father's death. Your mother must have died without a pang. He, by a strenuous will, kept death at bay A minute, and his dying cry was Linda! Hardly can he have felt his sufferings, Such the intentness of his thought for you!" The fount of tears was happily struck at last, And Linda wept profusely. Meredith Quitted the room; but the old woman sat Beside the bed, her thin and shrunken fingers Hiding themselves in Linda's ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... to Tom as he spoke. All four lads watched with intentness the figure on the beach, while Tom prepared to reply to his further signals with his flag grasped ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... we were rescued by the interposition of the gentleman opposite, whose small twinkling eyes had been taking me in with intentness. ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... in the action of the disappointed suitors so perfectly true or touching as that of the youth breaking his rod in this composition of Giotto's; nor is there among any of the figures the expression of solemn earnestness and intentness on the event which is marked among the attendants here, and in the ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... till we halted before the farmhouse garden-gate. I watched to catch his impressions in his countenance. He surveyed the carved front and low-browed lattices, the straggling gooseberry-bushes and crooked firs, with solemn intentness, and then shook his head: his private feelings entirely disapproved of the exterior of his new abode. But he had sense to postpone complaining: there might be compensation within. Before he dismounted, I went and opened the door. It was half-past six; ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... thrown off his rug, but her imperious gesture kept him seated. She was looking at him with an intentness which was almost tragical. ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... lasted she had seen it, according to her habit of vision, with peculiar intentness, and she had seen nothing else; but from the beginning to the end, it had appeared to her mainly as an international disturbance which had upset the serene and regular course of her family affairs. For the past two years she had refused ...
— One Man in His Time • Ellen Glasgow
... again, conscious that the dusky-browed young woman, slenderly erect in her dark blue linen and nurse's cap, was examining him with an intentness which contrasted curiously with the absent-minded glance she had dropped on ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... his hand. Leaning heavily on one of the chairs, he stared with a passionate intentness. "Grimshaw?" he said ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... done, by the words:—"Thank you, Doctor, and good- night," very gratefully pronounced as she uttered them, however, it was with a repetition of the serious, direct gaze, I thought, peculiar in its gravity and intentness. ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... fore, catching imaginary things in his teeth and shaking them to pieces. When the fury diminished he began to glide up and down the fence, and there was something so feline in the grace of those long steps and the intentness with which the brute watched Cordova that the girl remembered a new-brought tiger in the zoo. Also, rage had poured him full of such strength that through the dust cloud she caught again glimpses of that ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... come closer; he put his hand down and gripped her arm. Her eloquence dried up before the intentness of his face, and she ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... In the intentness with which she looked after him again, she made a hasty gesture with her hand when the old woman began to reply, as if her view could be obstructed by mere sound. Her mother watching her, and not him, remained silent; until her kindling glance subsided, and she drew ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... energies of every one seemed to be wholly devoted to the washing of the gravel, handful by handful, while the eyes were strained to catch a sight of the smallest particle of gold in the muddy swirl the gravel and water made in the article used for a dish. The intentness with which the work was done; the feverish movements of the men; the quick gestures and the grasping care exercised by them over the gravel,—all suggested that their anticipations had been realized, and they were really obtaining ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... he looked around upon the scene which now met his eye, a doubt arose in his mind. He picked up his bag with a sigh, and approached a man who had been standing apart from the rest of the loungers and regarding him with indolent intentness. ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... have been dreadfully wounded!" said Mrs. Lascelles, raising her eyes from my sticks and gazing at me, I fancied, with some intentness; but at her expression I ...
— No Hero • E.W. Hornung
... up. The scratching continued for a few moments, and the door swung open. A tall, thin figure of a man entered, the door closed behind him, and with some further scratching he locked it. Then the man turned and stared at Ned. Ned stared with equal intentness at him. ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and a more than shabby general aspect; a thin face and a red nose, a patch over one eye, and the other half drowned in moisture. He leans in a slightly stooping posture on a stick, forlorn and silent, addressing nobody but fixing his one moist eye on you with a certain intentness. He is a man who has been in decent circumstances at some former period of his life, but, falling into decay, he now haunts about the place, as a ghost haunts the spot where he was murdered. The word ragamuffin," he adds, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... more intentness than the attractions of the flower justified at a rose she held in her hand. The ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... to observe the unconscious intentness with which Melville regarded him, and, for some reason, it ...
— Do and Dare - A Brave Boy's Fight for Fortune • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... to push his unwelcome companion aside. Basil took him by the shoulders and stared into his face with an intentness that made the young fellow fancy that the fierce, black orbs confronting him were burning holes in his brain. For two minutes, that seemed two full hours, the gaze was concentrated upon him. Windybank felt his body ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... of the sort, I believe." He was suddenly possessed by the curious notion that he was being "pumped" by his fair companion. Indeed, a certain insistent note had crept into her voice and her eyes were searching his with an intentness that had not appeared in ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... pushed aside the papers, turned awkwardly in his swivel chair and held out his hand to me. It was a cool, firm hand, and its grasp surprised me, as much as the expression of his eyes—the steady eyes of complete self-control, composure, intentness. ...
— Under the Prophet in Utah - The National Menace of a Political Priestcraft • Frank J. Cannon and Harvey J. O'Higgins
... Frowning with intentness, he stopped before the house. Mother meekly halted beside him. She had not lost quite all of the training in self-dependence she had got from a business life, these last weeks, but she looked to him for ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... fixed his eyes on the speaker with an intentness, a cold penetration, that seemed to bore to the very recesses of his mind. In that look there was something questioning ...
— In the Shadow of the Hills • George C. Shedd
... mirror, then, when her expression was at its fiercest in intentness and concentration, she saw her daughter enter the room behind her, and for an instant a spasmodic frown darkened her ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... master behaved with so intrepid an air, and was so cheerful and complaisant to me, that he did credit to his kind choice, instead of shewing as if he was ashamed of it: And as I was resolved to busy my mind entirely with the duties of the day, my intentness on that occasion, and my thankfulness to God, for his unspeakable mercies to me, so took up my thoughts, that I was much less concerned, than I should otherwise have been, at the gazings and whisperings of the ladies and ...
— Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded • Samuel Richardson
... of the wraith, or phantom, however, in the broad-shouldered figure in a wide-brimmed Stetson sitting in the office watching Sprudell's approach with ominous intentness. ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... power of story-telling, is to have a power of life gained through the experience of having lived; to have a power of emotion acquired through the exercise of daily affairs; a power of imagination won from having dwelt upon the things of life with intentness, a power of sympathy obtained from seeing the things of others as you meet them day by day; and a first-hand knowledge of the sights and sounds and beauties of Nature, a knowledge of bird and flower, tree and rock, their ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... Bell heavily, but with the desperate intentness of a man who knows no excuses will be received ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science July 1930 • Various
... Aubrey gazed at me with a long, searching intentness of eye; his lips moved, but ...
— Devereux, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... with his hand on the lever, watching with savage intentness his phosphorescent charts ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... gone so far when I was brought up short by a tremendous oath behind me. At the same instant a match flared. I turned to face a stranger holding the little light above his head, and peering with fiery intentness over the group ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... had stopped staring at the wall, and had taken to watching the open window opposite with strange intentness. Only when the Nurse gave a final pat to ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... toward them a quaint-looking old woman, in what appeared to be a white scalloped nightcap. She had a pan of corn in her hand, and was attended by a retinue that would have rejoiced an epicure's heart. Chickens, ducks, geese, turkeys, and Guinea fowls thronged around and after her with an intentness on the grain and a disregard of one another's rights and feelings that reminded one unpleasantly of political aspirants just after a Presidential election. Johnny made a dive for an old gobbler, and the great red-wattled bird dropped his wings and seemed inclined to show fight, ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... remains, through the weakness and apparent apostasy of Savonarola. Has he, through whom first came to her definite guidance amid the dark perplexities of her life, been always untrue? has the light that seemed through him to dawn on her been therefore misleading and perverting? In almost agonised intentness she listens for some word, watches for some sign, which shall tell her it has not been so. She outrages all her womanly sensibilities by being present at the death-scene, in hope that something there, ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown |
