Although it was dark as usual I could see that the hall had only recently contained a great many people.

Atonement, if atonement were possible, could only be made at that sacred, sacrificial basin.

Now, he could only play the last card in what was probably the world's coldest deck.

And he could no longer think of face-saving, of honor, but only of escape.

So far as he knew, only his father could be there.

With the rapid rate of closure, the approach from below, the side, and ahead, there would be only a moment when damage could be done.

The way his red rubber lips were stretched across his pearly little teeth I thought he was only having a little joke, but, no, he wanted me to bend down from the roar of wind so he could roar something into my ear.

Then he would realize they were really things that only he himself could think.

From above one could only occasionally catch a glimpse of life on the floor of this green sea: a neighbor's gingham skirt flashing into sight for an instant on the path beneath her grape-arbor, or the movement of hands above a clothesline and the flutter of garments hung there, half-way down the block.

The part of the mind that preserves dates and events may remonstrate, `` It could have been like that for only a little while '' ; ;

it was mud in wet weather and dust, ankle-deep, in dry, and could be crossed only at the corner where there were stepping stones.

During the next five years liberal leaders in the United States sank in the cumulative confusion attendant upon and manifested in a negative policy of Containment -- and the bitterest irony -- enforced and enforceable only by threat of a weapon that we felt the greatest distaste for but could not abandon: the atom bomb.

It was, of course, a little boy's fantasy of winning his mother to himself, and replacing the father who could not give her the things she wanted -- a classical oedipal fantasy if you like -- but if it were only this the story would be banal.

These could be met only by considering the dynamical elements of several planets at one time.

They explained that they desired only to stop in India until a ship traveling on to Burma could be found.

It purports to be a letter from Steele to a friend at court, who, in Miss Blanchard's opinion, could only be meant as Swift.

The countrywide success of `` Lazybones '' and `` And The Angels Sing '' could only lead to Hollywood, where, besides Harold Arlen, Mercer collaborated with Harry Warren, Jimmy Van Heusen, Richard Whiting, Walter Donaldson, Jerome Kern, and Arthur Schwartz.

Sherman was responsible for the story when he said in his memoirs that this was the only time he could recall seeing Thomas ride so fast.

For them only a little more needed to be learned, and then all physical knowledge could be neatly sorted, packaged and put in the inventory to be drawn on for the solution of any human problem.

For by now the original cause of the quarrel, Philip's seizure of Gascony, was only one strand in the spider web of French interests that overlay all western Europe and that had been so well and closely spun that the lightest movement could set it trembling from one end to the other.

the pope was playing a dangerous game, with so many balls in the air at once that a misstep would bring them all about his ears, and his only hope was to temporize so that he could take advantage of every change in the delicate balance of European affairs.

When these chores were finished, only then, was she allowed whatever freedom she could find.

He spoke no German but he could sing it and the words of the song were the only ones he knew in a foreign language.

His mother Bess, who could not write herself, reminded her husband through Sturley to buy the apron he had promised her and `` a suite of hattes for 5 boies the yongst lined & trimmed with silke '' ( for John, only a year old ).

The fall of Rome, the discovery of precious metals, and the Protestant Reformation were all links and could only be explained and understood by comprehending the links that preceded and those that followed.

It could be some kind of trick Budd had thought up.

) hung on a hook on the wall, and underneath it I could see his tie, knotted, ready to be slipped over his head, a black badge of frayed respectability that ought never to have left his neck.

They, and the two large fans which I could dimly see as daylight filtered through their vents, down at the far end of the hall, could be turned on by a master switch situated inside the office.

Their roar, like the swelling volume of a hundred tornadoes could be heard for miles.

Bushes and vines abetted the rocks in forming thorny detours for the struggling stranger, and without the direct light of the sun to act as compass, Pamela could no longer be positive of her direction.

There was a peculiar density about it, a thick substance that could be sensed but never identified, never actually perceived.

And even with her limited knowledge of such things, she knew that the car could be repaired there ; ;

Not even an empty cartridge case could be found.

Inside the crown, stuffed behind the stained sweatband, could be seen thin, crumpled wads of currency.

How much of an accident could that be ''??

A hell of an altitude for a barrel roll, but it could be done.

At once my ears were drowned by a flow of what I took to be Spanish, but -- the driver's white teeth flashing at me, the road wildly veering beyond his glistening hair, beyond his gesticulating bottle -- it could have been the purest Oxford English I was half hearing ; ;

The entire length of the street could be raked with rifle fire from this barn.

When he awoke in the mornings, she was in his mind and he could hardly wait to get to school to be near her in the flesh.

It is hard to see how the situation could be otherwise.

Each could be the real thing.

Officers who participate in the continual practice drills assured me that the President's decision could be made and announced on the gold circuit within minutes after the first flash from Aj.

Seeking an obscure, dark, relatively quiet corner in the airy room otherwise suffused with afternoon sunshine, he asked if the soft background music could be turned off.

Faulkner culminates the Southern legend perhaps more masterfully than it has ever been, or could ever be, done.

The conversation that ensued may have been engrossing but it could hardly be called world-shattering.