Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/93



icy pinnacles, like uplifted daggers, piercing with sharp glitter the density of the low-hanging haze, from which large drops of moisture began presently to ooze rather than fall. Gradually the wind increased, and soon with sudden fierce gusts shook the pine-trees into shuddering anxiety,—the red slit in the sky closed, and a gleam of forked lightning leaped athwart the driving darkness. An appalling crash of thunder followed almost instantaneously, its deep boom vibrating in sullenly grand echoes on all sides of the Pass; and then—with a swirling, hissing rush of rain—the unbound hurricane burst forth alive and furious. On, on!—splitting huge boughs and flinging them aside like straws, swelling the rivers into riotous floods that swept hither and thither, carrying with them masses of rock and stone and tons of loosened snow—on, on! with pitiless force and destructive haste, the tempest rolled, thundered, and shrieked its way through Dariel."

It was such fine writing as this, doubtless, which caught Tennyson's fancy on casually opening the book to inspect and arrive at conclusions concerning its contents for himself, regardless of anything reviewers might have said previously in its disfavor. It was a sympathetic perusal of its many pages that drew from him a letter of commendation which he duly dispatched to its writer. It was the poetic conception of the city of Al-Kyris which appealed to the lonely Man of Wight, pondering, in his long island walks, on the strange romance of