Daphne du Maurier

His first instinct was to stretch out his hands to the sky. The white clouds seemed so near to him, surely they were easy to hold and to caress, strange-moving things belonging to the wide blue space of heaven . . . 'Julius Levy grows up in a peasant family in a village on the banks of the Seine. A quick-witted urchin …

The iron of the bridge felt hot under my hand. The sun had been upon it all day. Gripping hard with my hands I lifted myself on to the bar and gazed down steadily on the water passing under ... I thought of places I would never see, and women I should never love. A white sea breaking on a beach, the slow rustle of a …