“Their laughter was like the stridulation of the ghosts of grasshoppers.”

“And she gave him a melting smile, the glutinous sweetness of which he devoured with the avidity of a diabetic who swallows a fatal spoonful of jam.”

“Franklin Fletcher dreamed of luxury in the form of tiger-skins and beautiful women. He was prepared, at a pinch, to forgo the tiger-skins. Unfortunately the beautiful women seemed equally rare and inaccessible. At his office and at his boarding-house the girls were mere mice, or cattish, or kittenish, or had insufficiently read the advertisements.”

“Just behind his jaw bones a tiny movement was perceptible, like the movement of gills in a fish.”

“Their laughter was like the stridulation of the ghosts of grasshoppers.”