{"product_id":"2940013191174","title":"A CHRISTMAS GARLAND","description":"THE MOTE IN THE MIDDLE DISTANCE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e_By_\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eH*NRY J*M*S\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was with the sense of a, for him, very memorable something that\u003cbr\u003ehe peered now into the immediate future, and tried, not without\u003cbr\u003ecompunction, to take that period up where he had, prospectively, left\u003cbr\u003eit. But just where the deuce _had_ he left it? The consciousness of\u003cbr\u003edubiety was, for our friend, not, this morning, quite yet clean-cut\u003cbr\u003eenough to outline the figures on what she had called his \"horizon,\"\u003cbr\u003ebetween which and himself the twilight was indeed of a quality\u003cbr\u003esomewhat intimidating. He had run up, in the course of time, against\u003cbr\u003ea good number of \"teasers;\" and the function of teasing them back--of,\u003cbr\u003eas it were, giving them, every now and then, \"what for\"--was in him so\u003cbr\u003emuch a habit that he would have been at a loss had there been, on the\u003cbr\u003eface of it, nothing to lose. Oh, he always had offered rewards, of\u003cbr\u003ecourse--had ever so liberally pasted the windows of his soul with\u003cbr\u003estaring appeals, minute descriptions, promises that knew no bounds.\u003cbr\u003eBut the actual recovery of the article--the business of drawing and\u003cbr\u003ecrossing the cheque, blotched though this were with tears of joy--had\u003cbr\u003eblankly appeared to him rather in the light of a sacrilege, casting,\u003cbr\u003ehe sometimes felt, a palpable chill on the fervour of the next quest.\u003cbr\u003eIt was just this fervour that was threatened as, raising himself on\u003cbr\u003ehis elbow, he stared at the foot of his bed. That his eyes refused\u003cbr\u003eto rest there for more than the fraction of an instant, may be\u003cbr\u003etaken--_was_, even then, taken by Keith Tantalus--as a hint of his\u003cbr\u003erecollection that after all the phenomenon wasn't to be singular. Thus\u003cbr\u003ethe exact repetition, at the foot of Eva's bed, of the shape pendulous\u003cbr\u003eat the foot of _his_ was hardly enough to account for the fixity with\u003cbr\u003ewhich he envisaged it, and for which he was to find, some years later,\u003cbr\u003ea motive in the (as it turned out) hardly generous fear that Eva had\u003cbr\u003ealready made the great investigation \"on her own.\" Her very regular\u003cbr\u003ebreathing presently reassured him that, if she _had_ peeped into \"her\"\u003cbr\u003estocking, she must have done so in sleep. Whether he should wake her\u003cbr\u003enow, or wait for their nurse to wake them both in due course, was\u003cbr\u003ea problem presently solved by a new development. It was plain that\u003cbr\u003ehis sister was now watching him between her eyelashes. He had half\u003cbr\u003eexpected that. She really was--he had often told her that she really\u003cbr\u003ewas--magnificent; and her magnificence was never more obvious than in\u003cbr\u003ethe pause that elapsed before she all of a sudden remarked \"They so\u003cbr\u003every indubitably _are_, you know!\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt occurred to him as befitting Eva's remoteness, which was a part\u003cbr\u003eof Eva's magnificence, that her voice emerged somewhat muffled by the\u003cbr\u003ebedclothes. She was ever, indeed, the most telephonic of her sex. In\u003cbr\u003etalking to Eva you always had, as it were, your lips to the receiver.\u003cbr\u003eIf you didn't try to meet her fine eyes, it was that you simply\u003cbr\u003ecouldn't hope to: there were too many dark, too many buzzing and\u003cbr\u003ebewildering and all frankly not negotiable leagues in between.\u003cbr\u003eSnatches of other voices seemed often to intertrude themselves in the\u003cbr\u003eparley; and your loyal effort not to overhear these was complicated by\u003cbr\u003eyour fear of missing what Eva might be twittering. \"Oh, you certainly\u003cbr\u003ehaven't, my dear, the trick of propinquity!\" was a thrust she had\u003cbr\u003eonce parried by saying that, in that case, _he_ hadn't--to which his\u003cbr\u003eunspoken rejoinder that she had caught her tone from the peevish\u003cbr\u003eyoung women at the Central seemed to him (if not perhaps in the last,\u003cbr\u003ecertainly in the last but one, analysis) to lack finality. With\u003cbr\u003eEva, he had found, it was always safest to \"ring off.\" It was with a\u003cbr\u003ecertain sense of his rashness in the matter, therefore, that he now,\u003cbr\u003ewith an air of feverishly \"holding the line,\" said \"Oh, as to that!\"","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47073551057136,"sku":"2940013191174","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013191174_p0.jpg?v=1763577800","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013191174","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}