The Defence, before the fury of those, sounded almost meaningless. Even the judges showed their boredom: there was nothing novel about a man’s defence. The accusations, at least, had a certain interest, for they were levelled by such disparate people. The courtroom was for...
There were woodwinds in the rigging, and the creak of a piccolo in the timbers. The whole orchestra was starting up: it was becoming day. There was no curtain to be drawn this time, no cherubs, but merely a scrim through which it would be possible to perceive that comedy called Justice. The pumic...
The Moors had made them carpet-baggers for so long, that they were always indignant when anyone attempted to prevent them from stealing what they wanted, and what they wanted was to go home rich, for they thought no wider than their own native village. When baulked, they t...
When he came to the body had become a corpse. The first thing he saw was that it was day, though because of the smoke, the sky was the colour of celadon. Moreover, from the moist pungency of the smells around him, it must be early in the day. There was first the earthworm smell, faintly foetal, o...
asked Lotte. “What’s who like?”“The current wife.”Charlie was willing, in general terms, to talk about his young men. He didn’t like to talk about his marriages. They were one of the few things in his life he was ashamed of. “My first wife I went to...
She always had, or at any rate so she pretended. She felt there was magic in that name and for that reason she lived there. Of all the suburbs of any city that ebb and flow through fashion, there is always one that manages to hold its own through pride of place. For San Francisco, Atherton was th...
Tiiy pretended to dote on it, and was delighted, and Smenkara found himself a person of new importance. She was planning the throne to the second generation. She had only to be patient to get her own way. Nor did she think the prince would impede her. She had only to reach around him to grasp the...
He is like a man blindfolded. No matter how clever he is, eventually he is bound to lose his way. It is impossible to understand how they managed to conceal their relationship for so long. Yet, though they could not see each other as much as they would wish, and though the...
By the time they had reached the last grade, she was excited and eager to see once more the great sweep of countryside that had once been her home. They came round the bend, and below them, thousands of feet down, lay the whole panorama of Mono Lake, the desert, the volcan...
He must try again, but he was warier now. If his own past could not give the present back to him, then the past of another might. For he had given up all hope of finding understanding or wisdom in any living face. He looked now to the faces of the dead, and in particular t...