She was still looking down at the fan

Costume Study, Fashion, Furniture, Genre: Men, Genre: Women, Illustration, Interiors

Dimensions

Image Dimensions: 7.5 x 10.9 cm
Support Dimensions: 14.0 x 20.0 cm

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Needle in a Haystack

The following paragraphs with reference to the title have been taken from Eben Holden:

We rose with the others and went and sat down together in a corner of the great parlor. We talked of that night at the White Church in Faraway when we heard Nick Goodall play and she had felt the beginning of a new life.

“I’ve heard how well you did last year,” she said, ” and how nice you were to the girls. A friend wrote me all about it. How attentive you were to that little Miss Brown!” “But decently polite,” I answered. “One has to have somebody or—or—be a monk.”
“One has to have somebody!” she said, quickly, as she picked at the flower on her bosom and looked down at it soberly. “That is true one has to have somebody and, you know, I haven’t had any lack of company myself. By the way, I have news to tell you.”
She spoke slowly and in a low voice with a touch of sadness in it. I felt the color mounting to my face.

“News!” I repeated. “What news, Hope?”
“I am going away to England,” she said, “with Mrs. Fuller if—if mother will let me. I wish you would write and ask her to let me go
I was unhorsed. What to say I knew not; what it meant I could vaguely imagine. There was a moment of awkward silence.
“Of course I will ask her if you wish to go,” I said. “When do you sail?”
“They haven’t fixed the day yet.”

She sat looking down at her fan, a beautiful, filmy thing between braces of ivory. Her knees were crossed, one dainty foot showing under ruffles of lace. I looked at her a moment dumb with admiration.
“What a big man you have grown to be Will,” she said presently. “I am almost afraid of you now.”

She was still looking down at the fan and that little foot was moving nervously. Now was my time. I began framing an avowal. I felt a wild impulse to throw my strong arms about her and draw her close to me and feel the pink velvet of her fair face upon mine. If I had only done it! But what with the strangeness and grandeur of that big room, the voices of the others who were sitting in the library, near by, the mystery of the spreading crinoline that was pressing upon my knees, I had not half the courage of a lover.

“My friend writes me that you are in love,” she said, opening her fan and moving it slowly, as she looked up at me.
“She is right I must confess it,” I said, “I am madly, hopelessly in love. It is time you knew it Hope and I want your counsel.”
She rose quickly and turned her face away.
“Do not tell me—do not speak of it again— I forbid you,” she answered coldly. (1.)

1. Eben Holden: Chapter XXX: pp. 292-94