The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
page 173 of 291 (59%)
page 173 of 291 (59%)
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this light and brilliance. The attraction that these ladies who crowded
about him were beginning to exercise ceased. He no longer gave vague and clumsy responses to the subtly amorous advances that he was now assured were being made to him, and his eyes wandered for another sight of the girl of the first revolt. Where, precisely, had he seen her?... Graham was in one of the upper galleries in conversation with a bright-eyed lady on the subject of Eadhamite--the subject was his choice and not hers. He had interrupted her warm assurances of personal devotion with a matter-of-fact inquiry. He found her, as he had already found several other latter-day women that night, less well informed than charming. Suddenly, struggling against the eddying drift of nearer melody, the song of the Revolt, the great song he had heard in the Hall, hoarse and massive, came beating down to him. Ah! Now he remembered! He glanced up startled, and perceived above him an _oeil de boeuf_ through which this song had come, and beyond, the upper courses of cable, the blue haze, and the pendant fabric of the lights of the public ways. He heard the song break into a tumult of voices and cease. He perceived quite clearly the drone and tumult of the moving platforms and a murmur of many people. He had a vague persuasion that he could not account for, a sort of instinctive feeling that outside in the ways a huge crowd must be watching this place in which their Master amused himself. Though the song had stopped so abruptly, though the special music of this gathering reasserted itself, the _motif_ of the marching song, once |
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