The Tidal Wave and Other Stories by Ethel M. (Ethel May) Dell
page 69 of 340 (20%)
page 69 of 340 (20%)
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There came a sudden dimness. A cloud had drifted over the moon, and
Knight looked up and cursed it with furious impatience. It passed, and he saw her again--his vision, the goddess of his dream, still as the rock behind her, yet splendidly alive. He bent himself again to his work. Would that wave never come to veil her in sparkling raiment of foam? Ah! At last! The peace of the pool was shattered. A shining wave, curved, green, transparent, gleamed round the corner, ran, swift as a flame, along the rock, and broke with a thunderous roar in a torrent of snow-white surf. In a moment the pool was a seething tumult of water, and in that moment Knight saw his goddess as the artist in him had yearned to see her, her beauty half-veiled and half-revealed in a shimmering robe of foam. The vision vanished. Another cloud had drifted over the moon. Only the swirling water remained. Again he lifted his head to curse the fate that baffled him, and as he did so a hand came suddenly from the darkness behind and gripped him by the shoulder. A voice that was like the angry bellow of a bull roared in his ear. What it said he did not hear; so amazed was he by the utter unexpectedness of the attack. Before he had time to realise what was happening, he was shaken with furious force and flung aside. He fell--and his precious work fell with him--on the very edge of that swirling pool.... Seconds later, when the moon gleamed out again, he was still frantically |
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