The mantle of Elijah - 1900 Author:Israel Zangwill Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II " ELIJAH " FTER a vague period of numb misery and wander- ing thoughts, Allegra found her brain turning out fresh couplets, and presently lo! she ... more »was afire with the old eagerness, intensified by dread of everything now being too late; the Muse flown, the post lost, the prize missed. She held her watch to the moonlight and discovered it was eleven o'clock. " At the eleventh hour!" she murmured dramatically, pleased with the position. " All may yet be snatched from the flame!" She opened her door, and found the landing and staircases dark. She would go down to the now surely deserted drawing-room, where moths were improbable. She slid down two flights of banisters and arrived softly outside the drawing-room door. An unexpected bar of light stole from under it. Could her mother have fallen asleep in her arm-chair? She turned the doorhandle quietly, then saw with a shock her father's whitening head and broad shoulders bent over a litter of papers on the round table, and at his elbow the red despatch-box that meant dry-as-dust Cabinet affairs. She remained glued to the threshold, hesitant whether to advance or retreat. Time was when she had shared the general indifference of the household to his convenience. When she was rearing rabbits on Cornucopian principles, she had once dumped the whole family down on his manuscript, as he sat writing. He had taken them up gently by the ears and placed them silently on the floor, and resumed his writing without a word of reproach; but somehow sheknew she had sinned. His present attitude brought the episode back, and she had a lively twinge of remorse,- conceiving now the horror of little rabbits' legs scurrying across the wet lines of " Fame." The memory decided her for retreat; but her father turned his head vaguely. " Ah, c...« less