Today's Stichomancy for Mikhail Gorbachev

Of the Arab to follow! I go! vive la France!"

Few and rare were the meetings henceforth, as years fled, 'Twixt the child and the soldier. The two women led Lone lives in the lone house. Meanwhile the child grew Into girlhood; and, like a sunbeam, sliding through Her green quiet years, changed by gentle degrees To the loveliest vision of youth a youth sees In his loveliest fancies: as pure as a pearl, And as perfect: a noble and innocent girl, With eighteen sweet summers dissolved in the light Of her lovely and lovable eyes, soft and bright!

-- there was a little spare, frail-looking flunkey with a watch-chain on his waistcoat. He was reading a newspaper, and took no notice of them when they went in. Looking at his face Vassilyev, for some reason, thought that a man with such a face might steal, might murder, might bear false witness. But the face was really interesting: a big forehead, gray eyes, a little flattened nose, thin compressed lips, and a blankly stupid and at the same time insolent expression like that of a young harrier overtaking a hare. Vassilyev thought it would be nice to touch this man's hair, to see whether it was soft or coarse. It must be coarse like a dog's.

The Schoolmistress and Other Stories

the amount of explanation called into play. Why indeed--apart from oddity--the situation should have been really stiff was a question naturally not practical at the moment, and in fact, so far as we are concerned, a question tackled, later on and in private, only by Strether himself. He was to reflect later on and in private that it was mainly HE who had explained--as he had had moreover comparatively little difficulty in doing. He was to have at all events meanwhile the worrying thought of their perhaps secretly suspecting him of having plotted this coincidence, taking such pains as might be to give it the semblance of an accident. That possibility--as their imputation--didn't of course bear looking