Scattered Pearls Quotes

Love isn't the work of the tender and the gentle; Love is the work of wrestlers. The one who becomes a servant of lovers is really a fortunate sovereign. Don't ask anyone about Love; ask Love about Love. Love is a cloud that scatters pearls.

He was part of a whole, a people scattered over the earth and yet eternally one and indivisible. Wherever a Jew lived, in whatever safety and isolation, he still belonged to his people.

You forget the life you had before, after awhile. Things you cherish and hold dear are like pearls on a string. Cut the knot and they scatter across the floor, rolling into dark corners never to be found again. So you move on, and eventually you forget what the pearls even looked like. At least, you try.

On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. The infinite sky is motionless overhead and the restless water is boisterous. On the seashore of endless worlds the children meet with shouts and dances. They build their houses with sand, and they play with empty shells. With withered leaves they weave their boats and smilingly float them on the vast deep. Children have their play on the seashore of worlds. They know not how to swim, they know not how to cast nets. Pearl-fishers dive for pearls, merchants sail in their ships, while children gather pebbles and scatter them again. They seek not for hidden treasures, they know not how to cast nets. The sea surges up with laughter, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach. Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children, even like a mother while rocking her baby’s cradle. The sea plays with children, and pale gleams the smile of the sea-beach. On the seashore of endless worlds children meet. Tempest roams in the pathless sky, ships are wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and children play. On the seashore of endless worlds is the great meeting of children.

Love. It felt like a falling raindrop scatter on a trembling leaf then roll of its tip in a cascade of pearls

Young people, Lord. Do they still call it infatuation? That magic ax that chops away the world in one blow, leaving only the couple standing there trembling? Whatever they call it, it leaps over anything, takes the biggest chair, the largest slice, rules the ground wherever it walks, from a mansion to a swamp, and its selfishness is its beauty. Before I was reduced to singsong, I saw all kinds of mating. Most are two-night stands trying to last a season. Some, the riptide ones, claim exclusive right to the real name, even though everybody drowns in its wake. People with no imagination feed it with sex—the clown of love. They don’t know the real kinds, the better kinds, where losses are cut and everybody benefits. It takes a certain intelligence to love like that—softly, without props. But the world is such a showpiece, maybe that’s why folks try to outdo it, put everything they feel onstage just to prove they can think up things too: handsome scary things like fights to the death, adultery, setting sheets afire. They fail, of course. The world outdoes them every time. While they are busy showing off, digging other people’s graves, hanging themselves on a cross, running wild in the streets, cherries are quietly turning from greed to red, oysters are suffering pearls, and children are catching rain in their mouths expecting the drops to be cold but they’re not; they are warm and smell like pineapple before they get heavier and heavier, so heavy and fast they can’t be caught one at a time. Poor swimmers head for shore while strong ones wait for lightning’s silver veins. Bottle-green clouds sweep in, pushing the rain inland where palm trees pretend to be shocked by the wind. Women scatter shielding their hair and men bend low holding the women’s shoulders against their chests. I run too, finally. I say finally because I do like a good storm. I would be one of those people in the weather channel leaning into the wind while lawmen shout in megaphones: ‘Get moving!

Towards midnight the rain ceased and the clouds drifted away, so that the sky was scattered once more with the incredible lamps of stars. Then the breeze died too and there was no noise save the drip and tickle of water that ran out of clefts and spilled down, leaf by leaf, to the brown earth of the island. The air was cool, moist, and clear; and presently even the sound of the water was still. The beast lay huddled on the pale beach and the stains spread, inch by inch. The edge of the lagoon became a streak of phosphorescence which advanced minutely, as the great wave of the tide flowed. The clear water mirrored the clear sky and the angular bright constellations. The line of phosphorescence bulged about the sand grains and little pebbles; it held them each in a dimple of tension, then suddenly accepted them with an inaudible syllable and moved on. Along the shoreward edge of the shallows the advancing clearness was full of strange, moonbeam-bodied creatures with fiery eyes. Here and there a larger pebble clung to its own air and was covered with a coat of pearls. The tide swelled in over the rain-pitted sand and smoothed everything with a layer of silver. Now it touched the first of the stains that seeped from the broken body and the creatures made a moving patch of light as they gathered at the edge. The water rose further and dressed Simon's coarse hair with brightness. The line of his cheek silvered and the turn of his shoulder became sculptured marble. The strange, attendant creatures, with their fiery eyes and trailing vapours busied themselves round his head. The body lifted a fraction of an inch from the sand and a bubble of air escaped from the mouth with a wet plop. Then it turned gently in the water. Somewhere over the darkened curve of the world the sun and moon were pulling; and the film of water on the earth planet was held, bulging slightly on one side while the solid core turned. The great wave of the tide moved further along the island and the water lifted. Softly, surrounded by a fringe of inquisitive bright creatures, itself a silver shape beneath the steadfast constellations, Simon's dead body moved out towards the open sea.

The stars sparkled in an inky sky as they drove through the hot summer night—rhinestones scattered across midnight silk. Out here, a person could almost see forever across the flat expanse of farmland. Wide-open spaces revealed little towns miles away, their lights glinting like rubies and pearls. Kansas held a subtle beauty that only a quiet eye could see.

In the halls of heaven it was now dark enough for the Aurora Borealis sisters to begin their lively dance of the veils. With an enchanting play of colors they flitted light and quick about the great stage of the heavens, in fluttering golden dresses, their tumbling pearl necklaces scattering here and there in their wild caperings.

That was how evil spoke. It made its own corrupt sense; it swore that the good were evil, and that evil had come to save mankind. It brought up ancient fears and scattered them on the street like pearls.

From my insufficiency to my perfection, and from my deviation to my equilibrium From my sublimity to my beauty, and from my splendor to my majesty From my scattering to my gathering, and from my rejection to my communion From my baseness to my preciousness, and from my stones to my pearls From my rising to my setting, and from my days to my nights From my luminosity to my darkness, and from my guidance to my straying From my perigee to my apogee, and from the base of my lance to its tip From my waxing to my waning, and from the void of my moon to its crescent From my pursuit to my flight, and from my steed to my gazelle From my breeze to my boughs, and from my boughs to my shade From my shade to my delight, and from my delight to my torment From my torment to my likeness, and from my likeness to my impossibility From my impossibility to my validity, and from my validity to my deficiency. I am no one in existence but myself,

Most humans are refugees in our countries because all our ancestors scattered across the globe from our homeland Africa.

Duke was a burly, barrel-shaped Rottweiler made up of muscle and solid fat and built like a wrestler, a dog that looked like it was permanently on the verge of dying of boredom. He shook his weighty head as if he was being plagued by ear-mites and dislodged a scatter of small romantic words like a broken rope of pearls.

The necklace of Al-Rassan had been broken then, the pearls scattering. Now they could be lost.

I pictured a sky. It was blue-black, soft and dense as fur. Across and over the expanse of night, into the velvet depths of it, light was scattered, enough for a thousand darknesses. Patterns revealed themselves; the eye, exquisitely dazzled, sought out snailshell whorls and shattered pearls, gods and beasts and planets. As we stood still, yet we rotated, and, whilst turning, moved in a larger circle, round and round the sun, and oh, the dizzying momentum of it ...

That was how evil spoke. It made its own corrupt sense; it swore that the good were evil, and that evil had come to save mankind. It brought up ancient fears and scattered them on the street like pearls. To fight what was wicked, magic and faith were needed.

Last Night’s Moon," “When will we next walk together under last night’s moon?” - Tu Fu March aspens, mist forest. Green rain pins down the sea, early evening cyanotype. Silver saltlines, weedy toques of low tide, pillow lava’s black spill indelible in the sand. Unbroken broken sea. — Rain sharpens marsh-hair birth-green of the spring firs. In the bog where the dead never disappear, where river birch drown, the surface strewn with reflection. This is the acid-soaked moss that eats bones, keeps flesh; the fermented ground where time stops and doesn’t; dissolves the skull, preserves the brain, wrinkled pearl in black mud. — In the autumn that made love necessary, we stood in rubber boots on the sphagnum raft and learned love is soil–stronger than peat or sea– melting what it holds. The past is not our own. Mole’s ribbon of earth, termite house, soaked sponge. It rises, keloids of rain on wood; spreads, milkweed galaxy, broken pod scattering the debris of attention. Where you are while your body is here, remembering in the cold spring afternoon. The past is a long bone. — Time is like the painter’s lie, no line around apple or along thigh, though the apple aches to its sweet edge, strains to its skin, the seam of density. Invisible line closest to touch. Lines of wet grass on my arm, your tongue’s wet line across my back. All the history in the bone-embedded hills of your body. Everything your mouth remembers. Your hands manipullate in the darkness, silver bromide of desire darkening skin with light. — Disoriented at great depths, confused by the noise of shipping routes, whales hover, small eyes squinting as they consult the magnetic map of the ocean floor. They strain, a thousand miles through cold channels; clicking thrums of distant loneliness bounce off seamounts and abyssal plains. They look up from perpetual dusk to rods of sunlight, a solar forest at the surface. Transfixed in the dark summer kitchen: feet bare on humid linoleum, cilia listening. Feral as the infrared aura of the snake’s prey, the bees’ pointillism, the infrasonic hum of the desert heard by the birds. The nighthawk spans the ceiling; swoops. Hot kitchen air vibrates. I look up to the pattern of stars under its wings.

People with no imagination feed it with sex—the clown of love. They don’t know the real kinds, the better kinds, where losses are cut and everybody benefits. It takes a certain intelligence to love like that—softly, without props. But the world is such a showpiece, maybe that’s why folks try to outdo it, put everything they feel onstage just to prove they can think up things too: handsome scary things like fights to the death, adultery, setting sheets afire. They fail, of course. The world outdoes them every time. While they are busy showing off, digging other people’s graves, hanging themselves on a cross, running wild in the streets, cherries are quietly turning from green to red, oysters are suffering pearls, and children are catching rain in their mouths expecting the drops to be cold but they’re not; they are warm and smell like pineapple before they get heavier and heavier, so heavy and fast they can’t be caught one at a time. Poor swimmers head for shore while strong ones wait for lightning’s silver veins. Bottle-green clouds sweep in, pushing the rain inland where palm trees pretend to be shocked by the wind. Women scatter shielding their hair and men bend low holding the women’s shoulders against their chests. I run too, finally. I say finally because I do like a good storm. I would be one of those people on the weather channel leaning into the wind while lawmen shout in megaphones: “Get moving!

I tipped my head back and closed my eyes. I pictured a sky. It was blue black, soft and dense as fur. Across and over the expanse of night, into the velvet depths of it, light was scattered, enough for a thousand darknesses. Patterns revealed themselves; the eye, exquisitely dazzled, sought out snail-shell whorls and shattered pearls, gods and beasts and planets. As we stood still, yet we rotated, and, whilst turning, moved in a larger circle, round and round the sun, and oh, the dizzying momentum of it..

In the poem Chestnuts, she muses about nature and the melancholy passing of summer, the end of the life cycle: On the smooth, bright path scattered and weary they lie around, brown and smiling, like a soft mouth; full and shiny, dearly charming; I hear them like a bubbling piano sound. As I pick one up and put it in my hand, softly caressing it like a small infant, I think of the tree and of the wind which sang softly through the leaves, alone. and that the chestnuts must have taken this soft song as the summer, which left unnoticed, sped along, and as its last farewell has left his tone.

When I was forc’d from Stella, ever dear Stella, food of my thoughts, heart of my heart; Stella, whose eyes make all my tempests clear, By iron laws of duty to depart: Alas I found that she with me did smart; I saw that tears did in her eyes appear; I saw that sighs her sweetest lips did part, And her sad words my saddest sense did hear. For me, I wept to see pearls scatter’d so; I sigh’d her sighs, and wailed for her woe, Yet swam in joy, such love in her was seen. Thus, while th’effect most bitter was to me, And nothing than the cause more sweet could be, I had been vex’d, if vex’d I had not been.

Evie's hair had been piled at the crown of her head in a mass of gleaming red curls and fastened with pearl-tipped pins. The scattering of amber freckles across her nose only increased her appeal, as if nature had given in to a moment of whimsy and sprinkled a few flecks of extra sunlight over her. Evie leaned into her partial hug as if she was seeking comfort. "Aunt F-Florence says I look like a f-flaming torch with my hair pinned up like this," she said. Daisy scowled at the comment. "Your aunt Florence should hardly make such statements when she looks like a hobgoblin." "Daisy, hush," Lillian said sternly.

-did you just ask something?" "I asked if you can undress any faster." Evie huffed with a mixture of amusement and exasperation. "No, I can't. There are too many b-buttons, and they're very small." "What a pity. Because in thirty seconds, I'm going to rip away whatever clothing you have left." Evie knew full well not to take the threat lightly- he'd done it before, on more than one occasion. "Sebastian, no. I like this dress." Her husband's eyes glinted with devilish humor as he watched her increasingly frantic efforts. "No dress is as beautiful as your naked skin. All those sweet freckles scattered over you, like a thousand tiny angel kisses... you have twenty seconds left, by the way." "You don't even h-have a clock," she complained. "I'm counting by heartbeats. You'd better hurry, love." Evie glanced anxiously down at the row of pearl buttons, which seem to have multiplied. With a defeated sigh, she dropped her arms to her sides. "Just go on and rip it off," she mumbled. She heard his silky laugh, and a sluice of water. He stood with streams runneling over the sleek, muscled contours of his body, and Evie gasped as she was pulled into a steaming embrace. His amused voice curled inside the sensitive shell of her ear. "My poor little put-upon wife. Let me help you. I have a way with buttons...

But Paradise would not be a bore for Muslims with different proclivities. Allah also promised his blessed that in Paradise, “round about them will serve, devoted to them, young male servants handsome as pearls well-guarded” (Qur’an 52:24), “youths of perpetual freshness” (Qur’an 56:17): “if thou seest them, thou wouldst think them scattered pearls” (Qur’an 76:19). But surely the Qur’an isn’t condoning homosexuality, is it? After all, it depicts Lot telling the people of Sodom: “For ye practise your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds” (7:81) and “of all the creatures in the world, will ye approach males, and leave those whom Allah has created for you to be your mates? Nay, ye are a people transgressing all limits!” (26:165). A hadith commands that “if a man who is not married is seized committing sodomy, he will be stoned to death.”6 Another hadith has Muhammad saying: “Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him.”7 These strictures have worked their way into Islamic legal codes, such that two Saudis were so anxious to avoid a flogging or prison term that they murdered a Pakistani who witnessed their “shameful acts” by running over him with a car, smashing his head in with a rock, and setting him on fire.8 But the pearl-like youths of Paradise have given rise to a strange double-mindedness about homosexuality in Islam. The great poet Abu Nuwas openly glorified homosexuality in his notorious poem the Perfumed Garden:

Nonna tucked each of her hands into the opposite sleeve, a wizened Confucius in a leopard bathrobe. "Michelangleo, he goes. For days and days he stays away from Elisabetta. The other girls, the prettier girls, have hope again. And then, there he goes once more, carrying only his nonno's ugly old glass-his telescope-and a bag of figs. These he lays at her feet. "'I see you,' he tells her. 'Every day for months, I watch. I see you. Where you sit, the sea is calm and dolphins swim near you. I see your mended net looks like a lady's lace. I see you dance in the rain before you run home. I see the jewel mosaic you leave to be scattered and remade again and again, piu bella than gold and pearls. You are piu bella than any other, queen of the sea. "'You do not need silk or pearls. I see that. But they are yours if you wish. I am yours if you wish.If you like what you see.' He gives her the glass. She takes it. Then she asks, 'What about the figs? My bisnonno, he laughs. 'It might take time, your looking to see if you like me. I bring lunch.'" Nonna slapped her knee again, clearly delighted with little Michelangelo's humor. "There is the love story. You like it?" I swallowed another yawn. "Si, Nonna.It's a good story." I couldn't resist. "But...a talking seagull? A dolphin guide? That kinda stretches the truth, dontcha think?" Nonna shrugged. "All truth, not all truth, does it matter? My nonno Guillermo came to Michelangelo and Elisabetta, then my papa Euplio to him, then me, your papa, you." She lowered her feet to the floor. Then pinched my cheek. Hard. Buona notte, bellissima." "Okay,Nonna." I yawned and pulled the white eyelet quilt up.I'd inked abstract swirl-and-dot patterns all over it when I redecorated my room. They're a little optic when I'm that tired. "Buona notte." As I was dozing off,I heard her rummaging in the linen cupboard next to my door. Reorganizing again, I though. She does that when Mom can't see her. They fold things completely different ways.

The archaeologist attached to the Bayard Dominick’s Marquesan team had reported in 1925 that the Marquesas offered “few opportunities for archaeological research.” But in 1956, a new expedition set out to reexamine the possibilities in these islands at the eastern edge of the Polynesian Triangle. An energetic Columbia University graduate student named Robert Suggs was sent ahead to reconnoiter, and he quickly discovered that the previous generation had gotten it all wrong. Everywhere he looked, he saw archaeological potential. “We were seldom out of sight of some relic of the ancient Marquesan culture,” he writes. “Through all the valleys were scattered clusters of ruined house platforms. . . . Overgrown with weeds, half tumbled down beneath the weight of toppled trees and the pressure of the inexorable palm roots, these ancient village sites were sources of stone axes, carved stone pestles, skulls, and other sundry curios.” There were ceremonial plazas “hundreds of feet long” and, high on the cliffs above the deep valleys, “burial caves containing the remains of the population of centuries past.” The coup de grâce came when Suggs and his guide followed up on a report of a large number of “pig bones” in the dunes at a place called Ha‘atuatua. This windswept expanse of scrub and sand lies on the exposed eastern corner of Nuku Hiva. A decade earlier, in 1946, a tidal wave had cut away part of the beach, and since then bones and other artifacts had been washing out of the dunes. Not knowing quite what to expect, Suggs and his guide rode over on horseback. When they came out of the “hibiscus tangle” at the back of the beach and “caught sight of the debris washing down the slope,” he writes, “I nearly fell out of the saddle.” The bones that were scattered all along the slope and on the beach below were not pig bones but human bones! Ribs, vertebrae, thigh bones, bits of skull vault, and innumerable hand and foot bones were everywhere. At the edge of the bank a bleached female skull rested upside down, almost entirely exposed. Where the bank had been cut away, a dark horizontal band about two feet thick could be seen between layers of clean white sand. Embedded in this band were bits of charcoal and saucers of ash, fragments of pearl shell, stone and coral tools, and large fitted stones that appeared to be part of a buried pavement. They had discovered the remains of an entire village, complete with postholes, cooking pits, courtyards, and burials. The time was too short to explore the site fully, but the very next year, Suggs and his wife returned to examine it. There

In a harmonious ballet of grace, another maiden retrieved a gold bracelet adorned with sea blue and white flowers and pearls from a jewelry display stand. The stand, crafted from metal, held an array of bracelets that dangled from its graceful arms. The bracelets, made from an array of materials, featured intricate designs, from beads to stones. This particular bracelet, with its gold chain links, bore a large sea-blue flower with white pearls on either side. It also featured smaller white flowers and golden leaves scattered throughout its design. Placing the bracelet into the princess's hands, the maiden added to the symphony of beauty.

Time moved too slowly. The steady march of the hours tormented me so that I felt myself falling to an illness. A fire was burning within me. Such was the heat that my thoughts scattered like a broken string of pearls.

Time moved too slowly. The steady march of the hours tormented me so that I felt myself falling to an illness. A fire was burning within me. Such was the heat that my thoughts scattered like a broken string of pearls.

Straying in the streets of ‘History,’ Ashes of past are being scattered, Where are the efforts to make a necklace, From the pearls of vision dispersed there.

The poet in me broke free of the writer and spilled stars on a white sky scattered and spaced across like the Milky Way.

Tonight is a night of union for the stars and of scattering, scattering, since a bride is coming from the skies, consisting of a full moon. Venus cannot contain hereself for charming melodies, like the nightingale which becomes intoxicated with the rose in spring-time. See how the polestar is ogling Leo; behold what dust Pisces is stirring up drom the deep! Jupiter has galloped his steed against ancient Saturn, saying "Take back your youth and go, bring good tidings!" Mars' hand, which was full of blood from the handle of his sword, has become as life-giving as the sun, the exalted in works. Since Aquarius has come full of that water of life, the dry cluster of Virgo is raining pearls from him. The Pleiades full of goodness fears not Libra and being broken; how should Aries flee away in fright from its mother? When from the moon the arrow of a glance struck the heart of Sagittarius, he took to night-faring in passion for her, like Scorpio. On such a festival, go, sacrifice Taurus, else you are crooked of gait in the mud like Cancer. This sky is the astrolabe, and the reality is Love; whatever wesay of this, attend to the meaning. Shamsi-Tabriz, on that dawn when you shine, the dark night is transformed to bright day by your moonlike face.

Biscuits 2 cups White Lily Self-Rising Flour* dash of salt 2/3 cup vegetable shortening or cold butter 2/3 to ¾ cup milk or buttermilk 1 egg white mixed with 1 tablespoon cold water Preheat oven to 450°F.   Measure flour into a large bowl. Add salt. Divide shortening or butter into pieces and scatter on top of flour. Work

24 And as surely as the Lord liveth, will he agather in from the four quarters of the earth all the remnant of the bseed of Jacob, who are scattered abroad upon all the face of the earth.

This Master John Wycliffe translated from Latin into English - the Angle, not the angel speech - and so the pearl of the Gospel is scattered abroad and trodden underfoot by swine”.

What happened to all my friends from my youth? Of the ones, who were deported to Transnistria, very few survived. The ones in the Soviet Union, all survived; some came West in the last ten years. I saw Martha and Malzia in Israel in 1983, after more than 40 years. We were 21 years old when we were scattered with the wind. We met again as women in our 60s. Rosl lives in Germany and visited me once in New York in 1982. I correspond with some to this day.

When we finally step back and Isolde helps me find my clothes and my belt, I see what was next to me all along—the spray of shattered glass from Mark’s flung gin. That’s why he kept kicking my foot. He didn’t want me to step on the glass and cut myself. As we leave, I dare one last glance back at the shards on the ground. They sparkle against the cum that I spilled all over them, a scatter of diamonds and pearls in the night.

Even the most brave and powerful men tremble at the sight of their Beloved - So vulnerable from the essence her fragrance leaves in their heart. I remember You like a cryptic carving of ancient scriptures on the sandalwood With reverence, meaning and a scent. I dance like a wild stream between the palms of God - so that, My movement is free of thought, My love for you free from context, I mirror galaxies for you drunk of my own reflection, You are the silence in a drowning noise - like an island, And your silence becomes a voice of its own. Tonight I am Rumi, the poet of the poets Who spoke of the Beloved: Oh Beloved, Moon of the Moons! Your pale face dissolves in the daylight, Where should I find you in my wake? Light becomes a concealing veil for your sacredness. Night covers you in a different veil, like that pearl at the bottom of the ocean, that is my heart. So precious is thy refinement. You move with the tides, always leaving but a fragrance of devotion. I'm meeting you on the crossroads where breath becomes life - And like a breath, immersed and formless, together we are scattered and life is merely a passage, a doorway to our secret garden.

Since 1982, the Navy has allowed survivors from the Arizona to be interred there, along with a full military service. They can either have their ashes scattered over the wreck, or they can have their ashes put in an urn that a Navy diver will place in the barbette of the No. 2 turret.

While all Pearl Harbor survivors may have their ashes scattered over the harbor, only Arizona survivors may be interred on the ship. Urns are placed underwater in the well of the barbette for Turret No. 4.

Your profile relies on you not being anything and the shape of your unreal body unstrings and scatters the pearls of the very idea that you even have a shape. You have already passed, you have already been, I have already loved you — that is how I feel your presence.

When the tides of realization rise, words scatter and fade away.

This is the one thing I managed to keep. I’d rather give it to you privately, since I have nothing for the others.” Hesitantly she took the object from his open palm. It was a small, exquisite black cameo rimmed with pearls. A woman on a horse. “The woman is Athena,” Devon said. “According to myth, she invented the bridle and was the first ever to tame a horse.” Kathleen looked down at the gift in wonder. First the shawl…now this. Personal, beautiful, thoughtful things. No one had ever understood her taste so acutely. Damn him. “It’s lovely,” she said unsteadily. “Thank you.” Through a glaze of incipient tears, she saw him grin. Unclasping the little pin, she tried to fasten it to the center of her collar. “Is it straight?” “Not quite.” The backs of his fingers brushed her throat as he adjusted the cameo and pinned it. “I have yet to actually see you ride,” he said. “West claims that you’re more accomplished than anyone he’s ever seen.” “An exaggeration.” “I doubt that.” His fingers left her collar. “Happy Christmas,” he murmured, and leaned down to kiss her forehead. As the pressure of his lips lifted, Kathleen stepped back, trying to create a necessary distance between them. Her heel brushed against some solid, living thing, and a sharply indignant squeal startled her. “Oh!” Kathleen leaped forward instinctively, colliding with Devon’s front. His arms closed around her automatically, even as a pained grunt escaped him. “Oh--I’m sorry…What in heaven’s name--” She twisted to see behind her and broke off at the sight of Hamlet, who had come to root beneath the Christmas tree for stray sweets that had fallen from paper cones as they’d been removed from the branches. The pig snuffled among the folds of the tree skirt and the scattered presents wrapped in colored paper. Finding a tidbit to consume, he oinked in satisfaction. Kathleen shook her head and clung to Devon as laughter trembled through both of them. “Did I hurt you?” she asked, her hand resting lightly at the side of his waistcoat. His smiling lips grazed her temple. “Of course not, you little makeweight.” They stayed together in that delicious moment of scattered light and fragrant spruce and irresistible attraction.

but when he criticizes he scatters pearls!

I'm very good at arranging hair," the maid said firmly. "And Lady Westcliff told me to use her very own pearl hairpins for you. Now, if you'll sit at the dressing table, miss...?" Touched by Lillian's generosity in sending her own maid, Hannah complied. It took an eternity to curl her hair with hot tongs, and arrange it in pinned-up curls, with gleaming white pearls scattered amid the dark locks of her hair. The maid helped her into the white ballgown, and gave her a pair of silver-embroidered silk stockings from Evie. After fastening a pearl necklace from Annabelle Hunt around Hannah's neck, the maid helped her to tug on a pair of long white satin gloves from Daisy Swift. The wallflowers, Hannah thought with a grateful smile, were her own group of fairy godmothers.

Wherefore, after they are driven to and fro, for thus saith the angel, many shall be afflicted in the flesh, and shall not be suffered to aperish, because of the prayers of the faithful; they shall be scattered, and smitten, and hated; nevertheless, the Lord will be merciful unto them, that bwhen they shall come to the cknowledge of their Redeemer, they shall be dgathered together again to the elands of their inheritance.

That was how evil spoke. It made its own corrupt sense; it swore that the good were evil, and that evil had come to save mankind. It brought up ancient fears and scattered them on the street like pearls. To fight what was wicked, magic and faith were needed. This was what one must turn to when there was no other option.

Greg realised these weren’t his closing images at all. They were the opening images of the new movie of his life, the movie he’d be happy to watch on an infinite loop. His life would be a collection of the most wondrous pearls scattered over a beach of gold in this new Eden. He’d have to polish every moment, to make each gleam and shine like a perfect mirror because he might be seeing himself reflected back in those mirror moments. Forever.

I led Sophie and Boris towards the doors, still in a quandary. For some reason, there had come into my head the numerous scenes from movies in which a character, wishing to make an impressive exit from a room, flings open the wrong door and walks into a cupboard. Although for exactly the opposite reason - I wished us to leave so inconspicuously that when it was discussed afterwards no one would be quite sure at which point we had done so - it was equally crucial I avoided such a calamity. In the end I settled for the door most central in the row simply because it was the most imposing. There were pearl inlays within its deep panels and stone columns flanking each side. And at this moment, in front of each column, there stood a uniformed waiter as rigid as any sentry. A doorway of this status, I reasoned, while it might not necessarily take us directly through to the hotel, was certain to lead somewhere of significance from where we could work out our route, away from the public gaze. Motioning Sophie and Boris to follow, I drifted towards the door and, giving one of the uniformed men a curt nod, as though to say: 'There's no need to stir, I know what I'm doing,' pulled it open. Whereupon, to my horror, the very thing I had most feared occurred: I had opened a broom cupboard and, at that, one which had been filled beyond its capacity. Several household mops came rumbling out and fell with a clatter onto the marble floor, scattering a dark fluffy substance in all directions. Glancing into the cupboard, I saw an untidy heap of buckets, oily rags and aerosol cans. 'Excuse me,' I muttered to the uniformed man nearest me as he hastened to gather up the mops and, with glances now turning accusingly our way, I hurried in the direction of the neighbouring door.

A folded slip of paper fell from the wallet, and she began to tuck it back in. "We'll keep all your things right here, and..." Her voice faded as she saw the imprint of typed letters on the parchment. It was a carefully torn strip of the page she had typed at the office. Mr. Keir MacRae Lady Merritt Sterling "Oh," Merritt heard herself whisper, while her heartbeats went scattering like pearls from a broken necklace. It was only a scrap of paper and ink... but she understood what it meant.