5
" He perceived too in these still hours how little he had understood her hitherto. He had been blinded, — obsessed. He had been seeing her and himself and the whole world far too much as a display of the eternal dualism of sex, the incessant pursuit. Now with his sexual imaginings newly humbled and hopeless, with a realization of her own tremendous minimization of that fundamental of romance, he began to see all that there was in her personality and their possible relations outside that. He saw how gravely and deeply serious was her fine philanthropy, how honest and simple and impersonal her desire for knowledge and understandings. There is the brain of her at least, he thought, far out of Sir Isaac's reach. She wasn't abased by her surrenders, their simplicity exalted her, showed her innocent and himself a flushed and congested soul. He perceived now with the astonishment of a man newly awakened just how the great obsession of sex had dominated him — for how many years? Since his early undergraduate days. Had he anything to put beside her own fine detachment? Had he ever since his manhood touched philosophy, touched a social question, thought of anything human, thought of art, or literature or belief, without a glancing reference of the whole question to the uses of this eternal hunt? During that time had he ever talked to a girl or woman with an unembarrassed sincerity? He stripped his pretences bare; the answer was no. His very refinements had been no more than indicative fig-leaves. His conservatism and morality had been a mere dalliance with interests that too brutal a simplicity might have exhausted prematurely. And indeed hadn't the whole period of literature that had produced him been, in its straining purity and refinement, as it were one glowing, one illuminated fig-leaf, a vast conspiracy to keep certain matters always in mind by conspicuously covering them away? But this wonderful woman — it seemed — she hadn't them in mind! She shamed him if only by her trustful unsuspiciousness of the ancient selfish game of Him and Her that he had been so ardently playing.... He idealized and worshipped this clean blindness. He abased himself before it. "
― H.G. Wells , The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman
7
" we're looking for a planeet on the strength of a song. it's crazy I know, but its the only chance we have to do something useful." ...Evan Wilson said gravely " I think you're as crazy as Heinrich Schliemann - and you know what happened to him!" " What" ..." you don't know what happened to him?" she asked her blue eyes widening in astonishment." Ever read Homer's Iliad, Captain?" ..." I don't know what translation you read Doctor, but there was no Heinrich Schliemann in mine - or in the Odyssey." " That depends on how you look at it." smiling she settled back into her chair and went on," Heinrich Schliemann was from Earth, pre-federation days, and he read Homer too. No, not just read him, believed him. So he set out at his own expense-mind you, I doubt he could have found anyone else to fund such a crazy endeavor - to find Troy, a city that most of the educated people of his time considered pure invention on Homer's part." " And?" " And he found it. Next time you're on earth, stop by the Troy Museum. the artifacts are magnificent, and every one of them was found on the strength of a song. "
8
" Down through this verdant land Carter walked at evening, and saw twilight float up from the river to the marvelous golden spires of Thran. And just at the hour of dusk he came to the southern gate, and was stopped by a red-robed sentry till he had told three dreams beyond belief, and proved himself a dreamer worthy to walk up Thran's steep mysterious streets and linger in the bazaars where the wares of the ornate galleons were sold. Then into that incredible city he walked; through a wall so thick that the gate was a tunnel, and thereafter amidst curved and undulant ways winding deep and narrow between the heavenward towers. Lights shone through grated and balconied windows, and, the sound of lutes and pipes stole timid from inner courts where marble fountains bubbled. Carter knew his way, and edged down through darker streets to the river, where at an old sea tavern he found the captains and seamen he had known in myriad other dreams. There he bought his passage to Celephais on a great green galleon, and there he stopped for the night after speaking gravely to the venerable cat of that inn, who blinked dozing before an enormous hearth and dreamed of old wars and forgotten gods. "
― H.P. Lovecraft , The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
9
" There passed a child of four, a small girl on a footpath over the fields, going home in the evening to Erl. They looked at each other with round eyes." Hullo," said the child." Hullo, child of men," said the troll.. . . " What are you?" said the child." A troll of Elfland," answered the troll. " So I thought," said the child." Where are you going, child of men?" the troll asked." To the houses," the child replied." We don't want to go there," said the troll." N-no," said the child." Come to Elfland," the troll said.The child thought for a while. Other children had gone, and the elves always sent a changeling in their place, so that nobody quite missed them and nobody really knew. She thought awhile of the wonder and wildness of Elfland, and then of her own house." N-no," said the child." Why not?" said the troll." Mother made a jam roll this morning," said the child. And she walked on gravely home. Had it not been for that chance jam roll she had gone to Elfland." Jam!" said the troll contemptuously and thought of the tarns of Elfland, the great lily-leaves lying flat upon their solemn waters, the huge blue lilies towering into the elf-light above the green deep tarns: for jam this child had forsaken them! "
17
" Temperance Dews stood with quiet confidence, a respectable women who lived in the sewer that was St. Giles. Her eyes had widened at the sight of Lazarus, but she made no move to flee. Indeed, finding a strange man in her pathetic sitting room seemed not to frighten her at all.
Interesting.
“I am Lazarus Huntington, Lord Caire,” he said.
“I know. What are you doing here?”
He tilted his head, studying her. She knew him, yet did not recoil in horror? Yes, she’d do quite well. “I’ve come to make a proposition to you, Mrs. Dews.”
Still no sign of fear, though she eyed the doorway. “You’ve chosen the wrong woman, my lord. The night is late. Please leave my house.”
No fear and no deference to his rank. An interesting woman indeed.
“My proposition is not, er, illicit in nature,” he drawled. “In fact, it’s quite respectable. Or nearly so.”
She sighed, looked down at her tray, and then back up at him. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
He almost smiled. Tea? When had he last been offered something so very prosaic by a woman? He couldn’t remember.
But he replied gravely enough. “Thank you, no.”
She nodded. “Then if you don’t mind?”
He waved a hand to indicate permission.
She set the tea tray on the wretched little table and sat on the padded footstool to pour herself a cup. He watched her. She was a monochromatic study. Her dress, bodice, hose, and shoes were all flat black. A fichu tucked in at her severe neckline, an apron, and cap—no lace or ruffles—were all white. No color marred her aspect, making the lush red of her full lips all the more startling. She wore the clothes of a nun, yet had the mouth of a sybarite.
The contrast was fascinating—and arousing.
“You’re a Puritan?” he asked.
Her beautiful mouth compressed. “No. "
― Elizabeth Hoyt , Wicked Intentions (Maiden Lane, #1)
