"Breathless" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... meanwhile, had so little doubt of his ability to quench the insurrection that he said as much in the letter that he wrote to the garrison of Villa Rica informing them of his safe arrival in the capital. But his messenger had not been gone half-an-hour before he returned breathless with terror, and covered with wounds, saying that the city was in arms, the drawbridges were raised, and the enemy would soon ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang
... his stool, before his easel, looking vacantly at the unfinished picture, as one stunned and breathless. For the purport of this message was not to be mistaken. Nor did his conscience leave him in doubt as to his duty, O God! was this, indeed, the end? Had he toiled, and hoped, and prayed, and lived the life of an anchorite ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... incidental to their co-existence. Yet inherent inertia can only be observed relatively: it makes no difference to me whether I am said to be moving at a great speed or absolutely at rest, if I am not jolted or breathless, and if my felt environment does not change. Inertia, or weight, in so far as it denotes something intrinsic, seems to be but another name for substance or the principle of existence: in so far as it denotes the first law of motion, ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... instant he dared not look at Shaw. He was shaken by an emotion that left him breathless and almost trembling. What was Doris's photograph doing in this man's room? In the momentary amazement and fury that overwhelmed him at the discovery, he told himself that it would not have been much worse to find her actual ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... shepherds told their breathless tale Of the bright choir that woke the sleeping vale; Told how the skies with sudden glory flamed; Told how the shining multitude proclaimed, "Joy, joy to earth! Behold the hallowed morn! In David's city Christ the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... in breathless silence, wondering if full revelation was about to be made. When Liz saw this, the old spirit of contrariness entered into her again, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... the Engine House, watched in breathless suspense by a crowd of more than two thousand people. In spite of the efforts of the sentinels they had jammed every inch of space commanding a view of ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... strength of a frenzied man? I ran through the streets, so set upon what I had to do that I was only dimly conscious of the faces of friends whom I met—dimly conscious also that Professor Wilson met me, running with equal precipitance in the opposite direction. Breathless but resolute I reached the house and rang the bell. A white cheeked maid opened the door, and turned whiter yet when she saw the face ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... monsters hurrying in disorderly array into the gloom of the horizon. A blue gap, that grew larger by degrees, had opened up above the city. But Helene, her elbows trembling on the window-rail, still breathless from her hasty ascent, saw nothing, and merely heard her heart beating against her swelling breast. She drew a long breath, but it seemed to her that the spreading valley with its river, its two millions of people, its immense city, ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... off, came running Mistress Pauncefort, quite breathless. 'Miss Herbert's fur cloak, my lady; you told me to remember, my lady, and I cannot think how I forgot it. But I really have been so very hot all day, that such a thing as furs never entered my head. And for my part, until I travelled, I always thought furs were only worn in Russia. But live ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... nevertheless realized that it was not desirable to attempt a landing where he had intended. Yielding to the guiding impulse, he floundered down-stream, until Lisle again seized him and drove him shoreward, and a few moments later he stood up, breathless, in a few feet of slacker water. He waded to the bank, and then turned to ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... again in my folly, and, turning, ran down the road at my best speed, laughing still. Fontelles made no effort to follow me, yet on I ran, till I came to my mother's house. Stopping there, panting and breathless, I cried in the exuberance ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... above us seemed crowded with glowing missiles. The impact from the first arrivals of the cometary body upon the outer envelopes of the Martian atmosphere had begun. A loud shout of attention, surprise and half extemporized terror rose from the multitudes about us. It was a breathless moment. The oncoming shoals shot forward in rapid jets of fire now clouded together in igneous masses, now separated in disjointed streaks and radiant clusters of snapping, ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... years; who wrote so many unintelligible visions and apocalyptic truths on the theory of music, of which neither he nor anybody else understood a word; and from whom we have a certain number of operas that are not without harmony, refrains, random notions, uproar, triumphs, glories, murmurs, breathless victories, and dance-tunes that will last to all eternity; and who, after burying Lulli, the Florentine, will be himself buried by the Italian virtuosi,—a fate that he had a presentiment of, which made him gloomy and chagrined; ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists - Volume II. • John Morley
... breathless: 'That was what she said to ME. She must have told you that white roses ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... were interrupted. The door at the stair burst open. A black maid, breathless, broke ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... because a carriage was passing, and this brought to a neighboring window a little old woman, who stood in breathless horror, expecting to see the man fall from the roof ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... those bright, speaking, intelligent eyes of his as he bent nearer and nearer; while his low, sonorous voice in well-chosen words pictured to me the promise which fortified cement holds out to the world; that is, ignorant person, Portland cement strengthened by ribs of steel; and I sat listening breathless as his glowing phrases prophesied the ...
— A Rock in the Baltic • Robert Barr
... inquired the discreet Bamber, leaning forward and stepping over the sill. I continued to dance heavily in my corner and to utter breathless snorts and exclamations such as, 'Let go, I tell you!' 'Aha! would you?' and so forth. Bamber took another step forward, craned his neck and called out, 'Shove 'im over this way, Alf, ...
— The Uttermost Farthing - A Savant's Vendetta • R. Austin Freeman
... I keep up with your breathless changes? Innerleithen, Cramond, Bridge of Allan, Dunblane, Selkirk. I lean to Cramond, but I shall be pleased anywhere, any respite from Davos; never mind, it has been a good, though a dear lesson. Now, with my improved health, if I can pass the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... understand him or help him. You just left him drift away because he didn't fall in with your narrow-minded ideas. I may have done wrong, I have done wrong; but he has always been all that is good and true and honourable. He may leave me, but he'll never go back to you, never, never, never." She paused, breathless. ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... me, and pointed to her, and I pointed to the child. We stood breathless. Then of a sudden, stooping down, Merapi lifted up the child and held it towards its father. But, lo! now no longer was it dead; nay, it laughed and laughed, and seeing him, seemed to throw its arms ...
— Moon of Israel • H. Rider Haggard
... big, empty corridors. Miss Brown sat down at her desk, drew out the black-covered record book from the right-hand drawer, and gave a few reassuring pats to her dark, orderly hair. Scurrying footsteps pounded up to the cloak room entrance. A moment later, Thomas Jackson, still panting and breathless, stumbled into his seat and mopped the beads of perspiration from his dark-skinned forehead with his coatsleeve. Then the tardy bell rang and ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... dogs! the wicked beasts! the devils!" barked the old man, dancing about the room in a rage. After a while he dropped breathless into a chair and looked eagerly at his ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... were applied hurriedly. It was a big limousine, and its driver swerved perilously in avoiding Smith and nearly ran into me. But, the breathless moment past, the car was pulled up, head on to the railings; and a man in evening clothes was demanding excitedly what had happened. Smith, a hatless, disheveled figure, stepped up ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... interested face, and then amazement wiped out all other expression and he sat motionless, breathless, looking, intently looking. For the white object came straight toward the water and at the very edge unhesitatingly stepped upon the bridge of gold and lightly, easily advanced in his direction. The man waited. On came the figure and as it ...
— The Harvester • Gene Stratton Porter
... waiting. Then Moro hastened to give the three or four final strokes, the boy, between them, helping him on with his coat to save time; then, after paying or receiving the balance of his account with trembling hands, he ran in breathless haste to the house of the dean. There the tresillo lasted till eight o'clock. Then home to supper. At nine he repaired to Don Pedro Quinone's house to spend an hour or two in the same sort of way, and if he did not go there, he went to Don Juan Estrada-Rosa's ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds
... continued to increase in violence, bringing billows of rough sea from the ocean, our canoe dancing like a feather, one moment on a high crest by its skyward leap, and in the next to an abyss deep, with walls of sea on either side, shutting out a view of the horizon, while I, breathless with anxious hope, waited for the succeeding wave to again lift the frail bark. The better to preserve the equilibrium of the canoe—a conveyance treacherous at the best—wrapped in a blanket in the bottom of the ...
— Shadow and Light - An Autobiography with Reminiscences of the Last and Present Century • Mifflin Wistar Gibbs
... said, 'I have seen pictures of General Fitz-Hugh Lee, and judge you are the man; am I right?' General Lee was taken aback by this direct address, and nodded stiffly, while the audience bent forward breathless with curiosity as to what was going to follow. 'Then,' said Beecher, his face lighting up, 'I want to offer you this right hand which, in its own way, fought against you and yours twenty-five years ago, but which I would now willingly ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... thank God!" cried Mrs. Gwynne. "And you, too, my dear son—my brave Harold!" And she turned to him as he stood, leaning breathless ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... this time, the Navajo was coming up at a regular gallop. As the dialogue ended, he had got within about three hundred yards of the spring, and still pressed forward without slackening his pace. We kept our gaze fixed upon him in breathless silence, eyeing ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... me," the words continued in breathless haste. "I am from Zahn: do you know the good land of Zahn? I am Luhra. Horab captured me; carried me here to this island; it was yesterday he brought me here. He put me to sleep, and he put his men to sleep, hundreds ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... attacks on innocence and weakness, and savage gluttings of lust, of fury, with exultant paeans of self-glorification and praise of a justly applauding God. Before such novelty of onslaught the British mind had breathless moments of feeling itself stupid and incapably aghast. But after its first deep draughts of the cup of staggering the nation braced up a really muscular back and stood upon hard, stout legs and firm feet, immovable and fixed on ...
— Robin • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to-day is really another one of the marks of the Lord Jesus. Now and then a man appears in society from whose very presence there emanates an atmosphere and a sense of power—power that seizes upon the imagination of the beholder and holds him breathless, even as one stands breathless when overtaken by some sense in nature of overmastering sublimity. These strangely gifted men have appeared only at intervals of centuries. If an ordinary man is attacked in a lonely spot ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... A breathless night in July found him at the familiar tryst at an earlier hour than was his wont. He lay upon the grass at her feet with his hands clasped under his head and his face turned up to the stars. There was moonlight ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... long-haired Kamchadals seized Dodd and me, regardless of our remonstrances, hauled us this way and that until the struggle to get hold of some part of our unfortunate persons resembled the fight over the dead body of Patroclus, and finally hoisted us triumphantly into our saddles in a breathless and exhausted condition. One more such hospitable reception would forever have incapacitated us for the service of the Russian American Telegraph Company! I had only time to cast a hurried glance back at the Major. He ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... happened while Mr. Braidwood was at the head of the Edinburgh Brigade, he won great admiration by bringing out from the burning building a quantity of gunpowder which was known to be stored there. He would not ask any of his men to undertake this dangerous feat, but, amidst the breathless suspense of thousands of spectators, he coolly searched for and safely carried out, first one, and then a second, cask of this explosive material. Had the fire reached the powder, it was known that the worst consequences of the conflagration ...
— Fire Prevention and Fire Extinction • James Braidwood
... Banderah, son of Paylap," screamed the old man, waving the bloody hatchet fiercely at him. "I, old Toka, the priest, will to-day again show the men of Mayou how to drink the blood and eat the flesh of the long pigs the gods have given into our hands," and again he buried the weapon in Baxter's breathless body. And as Banderah looked at the old man's working face, and saw the savage mouth, flecked with foam, writhing and twisting in horrible contortions, and then saw the almost equally dreadful visages of the rest of his ...
— The Tapu Of Banderah - 1901 • Louis Becke
... striding down the path; he carried a gun on his shoulder. The boys had only just seen him and, on every side, they came scrambling out of the tree-tops, slid down the trunks and darted into the underwood. Breathless, bewildered and scared to death, Lowietje came to his sister and, with his two hands, held the rents of ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... looking sternly round the almost breathless and expectant circle, "when we left our l-lodges in the m-mountains this morning ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... of the platform at the bottom of the field, and with sonorous voice delivered a short opening prayer, followed by an impassioned address. In the clear, pure air every word was distinctly heard all over the field, the surging multitude keeping a breathless silence, broken only by the singing of the birds or the call of the seagulls. Sometimes a baby would send up a little wail of fatigue; but generally the slumberous air soothed and quieted ...
— By Berwen Banks • Allen Raine
... speak, but I was breathless. And Mercer took the words from my mouth before I could ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... noise and bustle of the day Were o'er. The mountebank no longer wrought Miraculous cures—he and his stage were gone; And he who, when the crisis of his tale Came, and all stood breathless with hope and fear, Sent round his cap; and he who thrumm'd his wire And sang, with pleading look and plaintive strain Melting the passenger. Thy thousand cries [62], So well portray'd and by a son of thine, Whose ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... more, was passed in the street before he could gain entrance; and then he was swept, along with the mob in which he had been fast wedged, through a dark low passage, and landed breathless in a quadrangle of mean and new buildings, overhung by the four hundred stately columns of the ruined Serapeium. The grass was already growing on the ruined capitals and architraves.... Little did ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... affection of his flock, she had inherited a spice of humorous philosophy, and this, combined with a very practical sense of justice, enabled her to accept human nature as she found it—without contempt, without censoriousness, and sometimes with a breathless admiration for its ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... Johnny, "is that it would be an all-level route, with solid ground and but very little grading," and he plunged with breathless energy into the task of convincing Mr. Boise that the Sage City and Salt Pool route ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... We waited breathless to see which way they would go. If they went on the other side of the gully, they must surely see that bundle on the ground and—who can tell what might happen? But they did not. With many a look backwards, they slowly rode away, and with them the ...
— A Woman Tenderfoot • Grace Gallatin Seton-Thompson
... breathless rabbits came scuttering away down Bull Banks, half carrying, half dragging a sack between them, bumpetty bump over the grass. They reached home safely, and ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... enemy suddenly showed an alarm light, which flashed for ten minutes and then disappeared. The next three minutes after its first appearance passed in breathless anxiety. We could just discern the dull outline of the boats which appeared to be almost on the beach. Just previously to this seven destroyers conveying the other men of the brigade glided noiselessly through the intervals between the battleships and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... parties had remained for upwards of six months in the Bastille, the trial commenced. The depositions of the witnesses having been heard, Cagliostro, as the principal culprit, was first called upon for his defence. He was listened to with the most breathless attention. He put himself into a theatrical attitude, and thus began:— "I am oppressed! — I am accused! — I am calumniated! Have I deserved this fate? I descend into my conscience, and I there find the peace that men refuse me! I have travelled a great deal ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... moved towards the door, discovering for the first time, on her way, the sleeping child. She stopped for a moment, and the other watched her with breathless curiosity, uncertain how far her ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... Mars, a French novel, with which I think you would be charmed, because I am; 2nd, The Collegians, in which there is much genius and strong drawing of human nature, but not elegant: terrible pictures of the passions, and horrible, breathless interest, especially in the third volume, which never flags till the last huddled twenty pages. My guardians turn their eyes reproachfully upon me. Mr. William Hamilton has been with us since the day before Wordsworth came, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... second time on the 2nd of April. This motion was opposed by Lord Bexley and the Earl of Malmesbury, as too precipitate, urging that on all former occasions a longer time had been allowed for consideration, and that breathless haste was the conduct of men called upon to decide as another dictated, rather than of legislators called to deliberate on a grave matter of public policy. Lord Holland, however, justified the motion, by referring to the haste with which the statutes about to be repealed had been originally passed: ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... letters, as I think I have made clear, and he read those lines with the same fire and fervour that I, myself, had breathed into them two years ago. But instead of the rapt and breathless attention with which my reading had been attended, the present company listened with a smile, whilst ever and anon a short laugh or a quiet chuckle would mark how well they understood to-night the subtle ironies ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... uttered the words when Phil came breathless to the window, and, as if moved by a sense of alarm, and an apprehension of danger still greater than that expressed by Poll ...
— Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... gun-shot; the greyhound has it all his own way as soon as he is loosed; and the terrier watches at a rat's hole, because he cannot get into it: but the pointer, at the moment that other dogs satisfy themselves, and rush upon their game, suddenly stops, and points with almost breathless anxiety to that which we might naturally suppose he would eagerly seize. The birds seen, the dog creeps after them cautiously, stopping at intervals, lest by a sudden movement he should spring them too soon. And then let us observe and admire his delight when his anxiety—for it is anxiety—is crowned ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... the "twenty-third" was gaping right there in front of him, with its fiery throat wide and flaming, doing the strangest thing. He was frightened of the dusk, he would run through the passage and up the stairs at breathless speed, he would look for a moment at the lamp-lit square with the lights of the opposite houses tigers' eyes, and the trees filmy like smoke, then would hastily draw the curtains and greet the warm inhabited room with a little gasp of ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... Managing to raise himself from the ground where he lay, he staggered in an opposite direction from the station. In front of the house of Senor Mazzini he was again wounded, falling then senseless and breathless. ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Volume IX. • Benjamin Harrison
... (as before). LITTLE JOHN and some of the OUTLAWS are gathered together talking. Occasionally they look anxiously toward the cave and at the approaches through the wood. Enter two FORESTERS, running and breathless. ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the last ounce of strength in their bodies, and after a final desperate effort, slumped to the floor breathless. Astro continued to push, but a moment later, relaxed and slipped ...
— Stand by for Mars! • Carey Rockwell
... stared through the open shutter. There was an eddy in the mass of human bodies, and the woman with helmeted head and tawny cheeks rushed out to the very brink of the stream. She put out her hands, shouted something, and all that wild mob took up the shout in a roaring chorus of articulated, rapid, breathless utterance. ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... for ever, By those dread Powers that weave the woof,— Whose art the singer's spell can sever? Whose breast has mail to music proof? Lo, to the Bard, a wand of wonder The Herald[8] of the Gods has given: He sinks the soul the death-realm under, Or lifts it breathless up to heaven— Half sport, half earnest, rocking its devotion Upon ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... all was at rest; the silence was broken only by the timid whisper of the swell, and by the chime of dropping water within some unseen cave: but what a different rest! Without, all lying breathless, stupefied, sun-stricken, in blinding glare; within, all coolness, and refreshing sleep. Without, all simple, broad, and vast; within, all various, with infinite richness of form and colour.—An Hairoun Alraschid's bower, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... what is the matter," he said, almost breathless and tearing open his waist-coat, "they are whispering all ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... with that breathless, brilliant heat which makes the plains of Kansas and Nebraska the best corn country in the world. It seemed as if we could hear the corn growing in the night; under the stars one caught a faint crackling in the dewy, heavy-odored cornfields where the feathered stalks stood so juicy ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... The audience was breathless. Most now saw the grim reality of the scene before them; and when at last O'Ryan's powerful right hand got a grip upon the throat of Jopp, and they saw the grip tighten, tighten, and Jopp's face go from red to purple, a hundred people gasped. Excited men made as though to move ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... woman, had thus chanted to her comity, the chorus straightway shrills with trembling tongues, the light tambour booms, the concave cymbals clang, and the troop swiftly hastes with rapid feet to verdurous Ida. Then raging wildly, breathless, wandering, with brain distraught, hurrieth Attis with her tambour, their leader through dense woods, like an untamed heifer shunning the burden of the yoke: and the swift Gallae press behind their ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... was cruelly dissipated three days later when, on reaching Bouvines, half-way to Namur, after a fifty-league march over bad roads, Lafayette was met by frightened, breathless couriers with despatches detailing the humiliating disasters which had befallen both Biron's and Dillon's divisions. The former, who had advanced upon Quievrain and succeeded in occupying that town, was utterly routed on arriving before Mons, and fled with the loss ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... dragging her shawl from the grasp that man had fastened upon it,—away under the old oak, and along the outskirts of the grove. She paused a moment in breathless terror at the narrowest point of the lawn, then darted across it, huddling the skirt of her ball dress up with one hand, and sweeping the dead leaves in winrows after her with the fringes of her shawl. She avoided the conservatory, for Tom was still visible through its rolling waves ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... called, all conversation instantly ceased. Perfect silence pervaded the hall, and every eye was riveted upon him. Slowly he ascended the steps of the tribune. His brow was calm, but his mouth closely compressed, as if to sustain some firm resolve. He paused for a moment, and the Assembly was breathless with suspense. He contracted his eyebrows, as if again reflecting upon his decision, and then, in a low, solemn, firm voice, uttered ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... extending from the mountain to the river, when a mounted officer from the rear called Jackson's attention, who rode back with him. A moment later there rushed out of the wood a young, rather well-looking woman, afterwards widely known as Belle Boyd. Breathless with speed and agitation, some time elapsed before she found her voice. Then, with much volubility, she said we were near Front Royal; that the town was filled with Federals, whose camp was on the west side of the river, where they had guns in position to cover the bridge; that they ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... breathless exclamations, he forced her to the top of the steps, backed recklessly down them, and came to a stop in the corner by the door. Evadna had taken refuge there; and he pressed her hard against the rough wall without in the least realizing ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... They waited, breathless, in the presence of the king of terrors. Again the bush swayed with a sinister motion. A deeper hush fell about them; the breeze died and song birds stilled their notes. A calamity was imminent. Neither watcher now doubted ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... A breathless pause came, while Bagby's countenance assumed a look of sudden anxiety. "I did n't say twenty-five," he ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... They listened in breathless interest to the confused sounds in the hall. There was a moving of locks, and then rough voices talking in suppressed whispers. The candles flared in the cold draught of wind that swept into the room, and the sound of the rain in the trees filled the air. Then ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... child being born of her mistress, she wished him good luck, and left him, as the fierce men came downstairs. And being alarmed by their power of language (because they had found no silver), she crept away in a breathless hurry, and afraid how her breath might come back to her. For oftentime ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... that pretty Daydream. To be a Wit—yes, while my eyes were reading Hegel, I had stolen out myself to amaze society with my epigrams. Each conversation I had crowned at its most breathless moment with words of double meaning which had echoed all through London. Feared and famous all my life-time for my repartees, when at last had come the last sad day, when my ashes had been swept ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... a trifle dazzled by the brilliance of his success. He paused for one breathless moment under the porte-cochere of the opera house; then he took a long breath and turned to the left. For he knew that at the right, just around the corner; were the royal carriages, with his own drawn up before the door, and Beppo and Hans erect on the box, their haughty noses red in the wind, ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Stony village. The light was faint, and the low ground streaked with haze, as they floundered through the muskeg, sinking deep in the softer spots and splashing through shallow pools. When they reached the first hill bench he was hot and breathless, and their path led sharply upward over banks of ragged stones which had a trick of slipping down when they trod on them. It was worse where the stones were large and they stumbled into the hollows between. Then they struggled through short pine-scrub, crawled up a wet gorge where thick willows ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... minutes from up the hill came another tumult, and Jake raised a long shout of "two possums," which served to hasten the scramble of the rest of the party through the underbrush to a breathless pace. ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... "Tired and breathless the two Sheep Eaters reached the park a few miles above the village and were met there by the rescuing party. The great chief, Red Eagle, folded Aggretta in his arms. Then taking his son, he embraced them both and blessed them with his richest blessings. The horns ...
— The Sheep Eaters • William Alonzo Allen
... The breathless sense of really monstrous injustice cut the power of speech in Soames' throat. What had he done! What ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... breathe not balsam, but paint. I remember the high wind that blew in bravely from the sea; the pavilion that was a wonder-world of never-failing attractiveness; and how on a certain occasion I watched with breathless anxiety and dumb amazement a man, who seemed to have discarded every garment common to the race, wheel a wheelbarrow with a grooved wheel up a tight rope stretched from the ground to the outer peak of ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... the pickaxe and lantern, to deliver the lady from her confinement; but he was surprised to find a light already burning in the Capulets' monument, and to see swords and blood near it, and Romeo and Paris lying breathless by the monument. ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... herself in one of those crises of exhaustion which periodically laid her low after each outbreak of ambitious enterprise; she might well be compared to a man worn out by fatigue and loss of blood, who becomes breathless and needs repose as soon as he attempts the least exertion. Before long, too, the scourges of disease and civil strife combined with exhaustion in hastening her ruin. The plague had broken out in the very year of the last expedition against Hadrach (765), perhaps under ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 7 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... shouting and waving his hands. The galleries went wild with noisy excitement. Men threatened each other with violence on the floor of the House, cursing and shaking their fists. Others rushed here and there trying to find some trace of the Clerk. The Speaker, breathless from calling for order and pounding with his gavel, had to sit ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... in the pulpit, while the congregation remained standing. For a while there was a breathless silence in the church, which to Flemming was more solemnly impressive than any audible prayer. The clergyman then arose, and began his sermon. His theme was the Reformation; and he attempted to prove how much easier it was to enter the kingdom of Heaven through the gateways of the Reformed ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... of the medium ships-of-the-line of the beginning of this century, with which Nelson fought his celebrated battles. As the flag-ship reached the hulks the night, which, though very dark, was fairly clear, had become obscured by the dense clouds of smoke that an almost breathless atmosphere suffered to settle down upon the water. Only twenty minutes had elapsed since the forts opened upon the Cayuga, when Farragut's flag entered the battle. Soon after passing the obstructions, and when about to sheer in toward ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... was leaning forward, watching with a certain sense of fascination the wild, disease-stricken face, listening to the man's breathless periods. It seemed that the fear of death, which had gotten hold of him, gave Victor Durnovo no ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... This breathless night the sea is as tetchy as petrol. Trailing fingers are terminals which ignite living flames, and the propeller of the little boat creates an avengeful commotion of light which trails far astern. Blobs of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... of a second nothing happens. It is as though all Nature waited breathless. Then, suddenly, it is as if the Last Trump had sounded and Judgment Day set in with ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the artistic life really lies is that it is often not taken up out of mere communicativeness and happy excitement, as a child tells a breathless tale, but as a device for attracting the notice and earning the applause of the world; and then it is on a par with all other self-regarding activities. But if it is taken up with a desire to give rather than to receive, as an irrepressible sharing of delight, ...
— Escape and Other Essays • Arthur Christopher Benson
... world. Montague had got up, and was moving here and there, because the tension was unendurable; and at the door of an inner office he heard some one at the telephone exclaiming, "For the love of God, can't you find out what's the matter?"—A moment later a man rushed in, breathless and wild-eyed, and his voice rang through the office, "The directors have declared a quarterly dividend of three per cent, and an extra ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... under the reckless impulse of the holiday the jack-pot, ordinarily modest enough for cause, grew to unheard-of proportions. It contained nearly fifteen dollars when Rudie opened it at last. Amid breathless silence, he then and there made the only ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... policeman opened the door, saying, 'Here, sir;' and Henry hurried in, pale and breathless, not looking in his brother's face, as he spoke ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... It was a breathless Willie who broke into his mother's kitchen wide eyed and gasping from the effects of excitement and a ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... his hand. "I won't act; I shall never 'play' for you again." He was breathless; the witching silence was nothing to what stirred him now. A singular exaltation rose in him, together with the reckless impulse to speak from the mood her vehement confidence had in-spired. He ...
— The Two Vanrevels • Booth Tarkington
... ears were deaf to the cry of "Stop thief," and shouts of "Two to one on Sandy," stirred no emotions in their fluttering breasts. Luckily for them the road began uphill, so they were able to get a fair start by the time the village was clear. When at last they pulled up breathless at the road-side, they could see the lamp of the coach a quarter of a mile down ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... child. He set off at a run for the river, with An-ina close upon his heels, utterly regardless of the fact that they were within full view of the on-coming trail men. This was a detail. The child's enthusiasm permitted no second thought, and his breathless orders to his nurse were flung back as he ran. The cover of the bush-lined river was reached, and the hiding-place was selected just short of ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... eyes dilated at the woman's speech. He looked for a catastrophe as the natural result of her taking such a tone with this man who was the terror of his household and of all Grenoble. Instead, the Lord Seneschal's meekness left him breathless with surprise. ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... nights? Loving is done with. Were he sitting now, As so few hours since, on that seat, we'd love No more—contrive no thousand happy ways To hide love from the loveless, any more. I think I might have urged some little point In my defense, to Thorold; he was breathless For the least hint of a defense: but no, The first shame over, all that would might fall. No Henry! Yet I merely sit and think The morn's deed o'er and o'er. I must have crept Out of myself. A Mildred that ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... For one breathless moment neither stirred. Then a single wild yell rang sharply forth from the rocks in their front, and a rifle barked savagely, its red flame cleaving the darkness with tongue of fire. An instant and the ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... come back!" said their mother, looking out into the yard. Yes, there were the sheep,—every one of them safe and sound. And there beside them, wagging his tail with joy and pride, was poor, tired, cold, hungry Rover. He was hoarse from barking and breathless from running, but he was the happiest dog in all ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy |
