I have had no other success that pulled at my
heartstrings like that one.
And the pathos of it and the tragedy is that they are tied by their
heartstrings. Their children--always the young life that it is their instinct to protect.
He knew, by some spiritual sense -- for the Creator never made another being so sensitive as this -- he knew that no friendly hand was pulling at his
heartstrings, and that an eye was looking curiously into him, which sought only evil, and found it.
Philip would have liked to drive on further, it was distasteful to him to go back to his rooms, and he wanted the air; but the desire to see the child clutched suddenly at his
heartstrings, and he smiled to himself as he thought of her toddling towards him with a crow of delight.
Oh, when I think that I will never see him again I feel as if a great brutal hand had twisted itself among my
heartstrings, and was wrenching them.
Of late years they had grown apart; but the old tie of school-girl intimacy was there, and made itself felt sharply in the tug the news gave at Anne's
heartstrings. Ruby, the brilliant, the merry, the coquettish!
He stretched out his arms to her, he called her in wild despair; a fearful yearning surged up in him, hunger for her that was agony, desire that was a new being born within him, tearing his
heartstrings, torturing him.
But it was not content: it kept pulling at his
heartstrings and thumping at his reason; it murmured in his ears and hovered perpetually before his eyes.
Then, in a low, sweet voice, scarcely louder than a whisper, he told how he had watched for her and met her now and then when she went abroad, but was all too afraid in her sweet presence to speak to her, until at last, beside the banks of Rother, he had spoken of his love, and she had whispered that which had made his
heartstrings quiver for joy.
The wonderful voice took hold of people by their
heartstrings; and when she told how the drenched crews were flung ashore, living and dead, and they carried the bodies to the glare of the fires, asking: "Child, is this your father?" or "Wife, is this your man?" you could hear hard breathing all over the benches.
But when a poet gets into the habit of using his
heartstrings to make chords for his lyre, he may thrum upon them as much as he will, without any great pain to himself.
"No longer than a week," he joked, playing upon her very
heartstrings with the gay, tender note of his laugh; "and yet I am fond of them all.