How to use "been" in a sentence

Since that time, the area has been called Robbers Roost country.

In the hour and a half we've been together, we've already become friends.

For the last half hour, I've been thinking of my best chance of escape

7.0 pm I've been chipping at the rock for almost three and a half hours

I have been trapped in Blue John Canyon for the last twenty-four hours

Escape has been impossible and I will die before anyone finds me

I've been here for exactly forty-eight hours

I have been awake for over a hundred hours

It's never been this late before

But the next minute we were kissing and making love! And when we finished, Jenny said, 'Forrest, where have you been all this time?'

'How long have we been friends, Forrest? Thirty years? Sometimes it doesn't seem true.' She moved nearer, and gave me a kiss

This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice

You have been the veterans of creative suffering

There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension

Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection

Is it true, then, that any right, plainly written in the Constitution, has been denied? I think not

Think if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly written provision of the Constitution has ever been denied

Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention, and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented

The prayers of both could not be answered; that of neither has been answered fully.

I have been told that noncooperation is unconstitutional

I say to my countrymen so long as you have a sense of honour and so long as you wish to remain the descendants and defenders of the noble traditions that have been handed to you for generations after generations; it is unconstitutional for you not to non-cooperate and unconstitutional for you to cooperate with a Government which has become so unjust as our Government has become.

But their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans - born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage - and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been summoned to give testimony to its national loyalty

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger

'Your shadow has been here again,' he joked to Miss Niner.

He's just been telling me what pleasure you both give him

You see, the last time you went to see Mr Sampson, I had already been to see him myself - I went to his house very early that morning

It had been in the water for about a month

But Abbeline had been wrong about George Chapman.

You've just been released from prison

'I've been in prison for nineteen years

I've been walking all day, and nobody in this town will give me food or a bed for the night

Jean Valjean's face, which had been hard and fierce, suddenly softened

Life had been unjust to him, and he was angry

Out of work, and with no food in the house, he had been arrested for trying to steal a loaf of bread

The world had been unfair to him, and he wanted revenge

'Heaven save us, it's been stolen!' she cried

The bishop, who had been bending sadly over a plant damaged by the basket, looked up and said gently, 'I think I was wrong to keep the silver for so long

When he had been angry at the world, he had felt calm and sure of himself

'I used to work in Paris, but my husband died and I lost my job.' She could not tell Mme Thenardier the truth, which was that she had been made pregnant by a young man who had then abandoned her

He had always been suspicious of M

Fantine trembled, as confused as Javert had been

And I promise that, in the eyes of God, you have never been a bad woman.'

The weeks passed and, although she was happier than she had been for a long time, Fantine caught a fever

The bars of his window had been broken during the night

As they were approaching the inn, Cosette turned to him and said, 'May I have the bucket now? If Mme Thenardier sees that someone has been helping me, she'll beat me.'

'That nasty little girl, who isn't even my own daughter, who I feed and look after out of the kindness of my heart, has been playing with my daughters' doll.'

He felt sad that Fantine had not lived to see her child again, but happy that he had been able to rescue her child from the terrible Thenardiers

For twenty-five years he had been alone in the world

'I must have been dreaming yesterday,' he laughed to himself

Gillenormand always told him that his father had been no good - that he was a poor soldier and a drunk who had abandoned him after his mother's death

He rarely bought new clothes, but he was proud of the fact that he had never been in debt

Her rough black dress had been replaced by one of fine black silk

The Jondrette family had been Marius's neighbours for many months, but he had never before paid much attention to them

She clapped her hands and cried, 'We've been looking for that everywhere! How did you know they were mine? Of course, the handwriting

Marius had lived for five years without much money, but he had never been really poor

'If they had had another neighbour,' he thought, 'one who had noticed their suffering, perhaps they could have been rescued by now.'

You've been kind to us - now I want to be kind to you

It's been eight years, but I recognized him at once.'

Then, when everything had been explained, Javert thought for a moment

Marius, however, who had been going to fire the gun as a signal for the police to arrive, shook so much that he almost fell off the cupboard.

The old man's been lying to us!'

When everybody had been arrested and taken from the room, Javert noticed the prisoner, who was standing, head bowed, by the window

'He must have been the cleverest of them all, 'Javert murmured angrily to himself.

'I've been looking for you everywhere

'But I've been so unhappy

When everything had been said, she laid her head on his shoulder and asked, 'What's your name?'

The General had been very popular with the people of France because of his love for Napoleon

Enjolras had been joined by many strangers as he and his friends had run shouting along the street

When they found a letter in his pocket which proved that he had been sent to spy on them, they tied him to a post inside the inn,

His anger and misery of minutes before had been replaced by a terrible calmness

'You can wear these.' Enjolras pointed to the National Guard uniforms that had been taken off the dead soldiers.

Jean Valjean, who had arrived unnoticed at the barricade, had been listening to the argument and had quickly understood the situation.

The barricade was stronger than it had been for the first assault, and the rebels were at their positions, guns loaded and ready for action

Marius had indeed been taken prisoner, but not by the soldiers

He had been looking after wounded men while bullets flew all around him

When Marius had been hit, Valjean ran to him at once, grabbed him before he fell and carried his unconscious body into a small alley behind the wine shop

He had been more interested in catching Thenardier, who had escaped from prison and was known to be in the area.

'He has just been brought here,' said a servant

He thought about Enjolras and Eponine, and wondered why Cosette's father had been at the barricade

He could not understand why nobody could tell him how he had been saved

All he knew was that he had been brought to his grandfather's house in a carriage

While you've been ill, she's spent her time crying and making bandages for you

Having been a mayor, he knew how to solve an awkward problem: the question of Cosette's real family He told everybody that he was not her father, but her guardian

It was cold and damp, but a fire had been lit and two armchairs had been placed in front of it

When he arrived, he discovered that the fire had not been lit, and the armchairs had been left near the door

Cosette had not been happy about this

One day her mother made some cakes and said to her, "Go, my dear, and see how your grandmother is doing, because she has been very ill

The wolf pulled the bobbin, and the door opened, and then he immediately fell upon the good woman and ate her up in a moment, for it been more than three days since he had eaten

It was March 15, and she had been going out with Cham for exactly one year

She could say with her hand on her heart that this year - her eighteenth - had been the best so far

One year ago, on March 15, 2087, she'd been standing in Space 29 in one of her favorite illusions

Sala had been so surprised she'd almost screamed

She remembered how quiet he'd been with their friends

They'd been standing under one of the shelters at the entrance to the walkway

Her back was often painful from when she'd been injured during the Oil Wars, so she almost never left the apartment these days.

"You know we've been together a year today? Well, he bought us a pod experience

"You've been swimming with dolphins?" asked Sala.

Such adventures had been normal then, but they seemed almost magical now.

Had he been odd with her? She wasn't sure

I've been..

"Oh! No." Sala's thoughts had been so full of Cham and Pod Life that she'd almost forgotten about it

"In fact, I've been looking into that Pod Life thing that Ding told us about

Another one! The news had spread about Pod Life, and other students had been discussing it all weekend

Sala had seen it before, of course, from a distance - but she'd never been so close to it.

A bit too clever, said a voice in Sala's head: they'd been together, and yet not together; they were able to talk to each other, but sometimes experienced things separately

I've been so busy at work the last few days, I feel I've not been home much at all."

"Mom, I've been wondering what you think of this new thing, Pod Life

It felt like a moment of magic: they'd never been so close.

She'd been about to do some studying, but watching a love story-stream was a much better idea

Dad came home with the news yesterday afternoon, and he and Mom have been really depressed ever since."

Sala hadn't been looking where she was going

I've been trying to send a message for many years, but nothing has crossed the boundary successfully

The government has lied to us - it's not contaminated like we've been told

Leti led them past the pods where they'd been swimming with dolphins, and then through some thick glass doors

"So," Leti said, "we've been over everything now

She had been there for about thirty minutes when a woman began running on the machine next to her

Since receiving Great-Uncle Eston's letter, Gran had been very quiet

"Yes, your grandmother's brother has been trying to contact her for a long time

"We've been really careful!" said Sala

We've been checking him as far as possible, too."

"I've been going crazy."

The whole way back from the earth apartment, Sala had been asking herself if it was OK to tell Cham about the rebellion

I've been thinking about this

"It's been hard for her, all this business about Uncle Eston

She's been hoping all week for more news

But I've been starting to wonder whether the whole thing was just a joke, or a trick, even."

"What have you been doing?" she asked.

he's fine." Sala described how enthusiastic he'd been, but she didn't mention his warning

"Oh, yes, don't mind me." But Gran was rubbing her back, where she'd been injured years ago

She'd been really excited to discover what the group was doing, but she hadn't considered actually joining them

That's how you've been taught to think."

The lights had been turned off; soon she was in complete darkness, so she turned on the lights on her virtual interface to guide her

The old sofa had been pushed against one wall, but there was no metal table or chairs

All the screens had been taken away

"I know you've been very sure about the letter, Gran

We've been having a lot of fun! This week, they gave us the chance to try snowboarding as well as skiing."

It had been so much fun, in spite of their lives being so limited

If he hadn't been so generous, buying her that pod experience, none of this would have happened.

I told him about my father, who had been a painter

I suddenly realized that we had been sitting at the table for more than an hour

'Have you been here before?'

Yes, I have been here before, many years ago.'

Mrs Van Hopper had been in bed for about ten days

She asked me what I had been doing.

If you had not been here, I would have left long ago

They must have been full of the life they had shared.

I've been crying all night

'Where have you been? What have you been doing all this time?'

She's been housekeeper here for years

Maxim sat in a chair by the fire reading the letters that had been waiting for him

'Have you been making changes?' I asked.

'They have been getting the rooms in the east wing ready for us

The rooms here have been specially arranged for you.'

'I suppose you have been at Manderley for many years,' I said.

I have been looking after the house for the past year

Each chair, each rug, each small ornament had been put there to make the room perfect.

'Mrs de Winter has been dead for over a year.'

'Major and Mrs Lacy have been here some time,' she said

I knew then that she had been watching me, laughing at my fear

'Where have you been hiding? Here is Beatrice and this is Giles

Rebecca had been drowned in the bay

I told her about Mrs Van Hopper and how surprised she had been.

I had never been in so beautiful a place

The raincoat, too wide, too long for me, must have been hers too

She had been charming, interested in everyone

There have been so many things to do.'

I heard myself saying, 'Rebecca must have been a wonderful person...'

'I have been hearing about the Fancy Dress Ball, Frank,' I said

'It must have been a lot of work,' I said

I had been thinking about that terrible night for so long.

No one except Robert has been in the room, apart from Madam, of course

'Who's been talking to you?'

It was the first time that I had been left alone at Manderley

As I sat there I felt happier than I had ever been at Manderley

He had certainly been to Manderley before

Had Favell known Rebecca? What had he been doing in the west wing? There were some very valuable things in the house

What have you been doing with yourself? Have you done much sketching? Did you like the books I sent you? Have you had anyone to stay?'

'We have all been thinking about it

Her name was Caroline de Winter and she had been famous for her beauty

Manderley had been made into a place of light and beauty, just for me.

The best party I've been to for a long time.'

The lights had been turned off

The servants had been very busy

He has not been in since.'

One of the shutters in the west wing had been pulled back

And then what will you do? You'll go to Mr de Winter and tell him that Mrs Danvers has been unkind to you

Someone had been in the boat with Rebecca that night.

He's been in trouble with the police many times

I wondered why I had been frightened of the servants before.

'Is it true,' she asked slowly, 'that Mrs de Winter's boat has been found and that there was a body in the cabin?'

All the papers said that Rebecca's body had been found after the Fancy Dress Ball

The sea-cocks had been turned full on.'

I wondered if he had been drinking.

This has been a shock to me, you know

'You've been very lucky

Rebecca had been pregnant when she died

She had been going to have a child

'There must have been something wrong with her after all.'

'An operation would have been useless

In six months, she would have been dead.'

'I am glad to have been of some use,' said Dr Baker

It's been a dreadful shock to me,' Favell said

You've been lucky, haven't you? You and your young wife can go back to Manderley now

'I've been glad to help

It's been a long day.'

But Danny had been dead more than a year.

Seizing on this boy's resemblance to her Danny, she was too easily able to fantasize that there had been no loss in the first place.

Sickened, grief-stricken, she had taken their advice, and Danny's funeral had been a closed-coffin service

But perhaps they'd been mistaken when they identified the body

Maybe Danny hadn't been killed in the accident, after all

Perhaps he had wandered away from the wrecked bus and had been found miles from the scene of the accident, without identification, unable to tell anyone who he was or where he came from

This boy in the station wagon was not the first that she had imagined was Danny; in recent weeks, she had seen her lost son in other cars, in schoolyards past which she had been driving, on public streets, in a movie theater.

Also, she'd recently been plagued by a repeating dream in which Danny was alive

She wasn't a dancer anymore; now she worked behind the curtain, in the production end of the show, but she still felt physically and psychologically best when she weighed no more than she had weighed when she'd been a performer.

Peanut-butter toast had been one of Danny's favorite foods, even when he was a toddler and was especially picky about what he would eat

It hadn't been merely the thunder from the dream

She had been jumpy lately

This wasn't the first night she'd been wrongly convinced that an intruder was prowling the house

Recently she'd been under a lot of pressure, both personally and professionally

Maybe what she'd heard tonight had been the thunder from the dream.

That was how it had been during the last months of their life together

He had been seething with hostility, always seeking an excuse to vent his anger on her.

Because Tina had loved Michael to the end, she'd been hurt and saddened by the dissolution of their relationship

Admittedly, she had also been relieved when it was finally over.

During the twelve years of their marriage, Tina had become a different and more complex person than she'd been on their wedding day, but Michael hadn't changed at all - and didn't like the woman that she had become

Almost a year ago, shortly after Danny had died, Tina had been offered a directing and co-producing job on a huge ten-million-dollar extravaganza to be staged in the two-thousand-seat main showroom of the Golden Pyramid, one of the largest and plushest hotels on the Strip

She would never forget him, that sweet child who had been such a large part of her, but she would no longer have to live her life around the gaping hole that he had left in it

Then the new dreams began, and they were far worse than the dream that she'd had immediately after Danny had been killed.

It must have been a large object because, though muffled by the intervening walls, the sound was loud enough to rouse her.

Whatever it had been..

It had been knocked over

This time she hadn't been imagining a threat

A little more than a year before he had died, Danny had begun sleeping at the opposite end of the small house from the master bedroom, in what had once been the den

She and Michael hadn't yet begun to raise their voices to each other; their disagreements had been conducted in normal tones, sometimes even in whispers, yet Danny probably had heard enough to know they were having problems.

She had been sorry that he'd had to know, but she hadn't said a word to him; she'd offered no explanations, no reassurances

He's been acting like an ass lately, but he'll get over it

Although the funeral had been more than a year ago, she had not yet been able to dispose of Danny's belongings

Unlike many boys his age, he'd been concerned about orderliness and cleanliness

Danny had liked to draw, and the easel, complete with a box of pencils and pens and paints, had been a birthday gift when he was nine

Danny had left it at the far end of the room, beyond the bed, against the wall, and that was where it had stood the last time that Tina had been here

She was positive that nothing had been written on the board when Danny had gone away on that scouting trip

And it had been blank the last time she'd been in this room.

Therefore, the words must have been here all along

Danny, of course, had been writing about something else, and the dark interpretation that could be drawn from those two words now, after his death, was just a macabre coincidence.

It was so huge that a DC-9 airliner could be rolled onto it without using half the space available - a feat that had been accomplished as part of a production number on a similar stage at a hotel in Reno several years ago

He had seen Tina's work in some lounges around town, and he had surprised her when he'd offered her the chance to co-produce Magyck! At first, she hadn't been sure if she should take the job

As Tina stood in this beautiful theater, glancing down at the colorfully costumed people milling about on the stage, then looking at Joel's rubbery face, listening as her co-producer unblushingly raved about their handiwork, she was happier than she had been in a long time

The Pyramid had been built at a cost in excess of four hundred million dollars, and the owners had made certain that every last dime showed

Tina supposed that some people would say this hotel was gross, crass, tasteless, ugly - but she loved the place because it was here that she had been given her big chance.

Thus far, the thirtieth of December had been a busy, noisy, exciting day at the Pyramid

Carol had been shiny-eyed and breathless because the high rollers had tipped her with green chips, as if they'd been winning instead of losing; for bringing them half a dozen drinks, she had collected twelve hundred dollars.

When she went into Danny's bedroom, she saw at once that the easel-chalkboard had been knocked over again

Vivienne had been scheduled to work this afternoon, but she'd canceled

Shattered by the loss of his son, Michael had been irrationally vicious with Tina for months after the funeral, accusing her of being responsible for Danny's death

She had given Danny permission to go on the field trip, and as far as Michael was concerned, that had been equivalent to driving the bus off the cliff

Jaborski, the scoutmaster, had taken other groups of scouts on winter survival hikes every year for sixteen years, and no one had been even slightly injured

She stared at the chalkboard, thought of the two words that had been printed there, and anger swelled in her

Eighteen hundred guests had been invited - Las Vegas movers and shakers, plus high rollers from out of town

Wardrobe women mended tears and sewed up unraveled hems that had been discovered at the last minute

Or perhaps this was the first time in all those months that she had been aware of being the object of such interest

She thought: My God, I've been letting myself dry up! How could I have forgotten this!

She'd been cleaning for Tina Evans for two years, and she had been entrusted with a key nearly that long.

This afternoon, however, she'd been playing a pair of lucky slot machines at the Mirage Hotel, and she hadn't wanted to walk away from them while they were paying off so generously

For five years, ever since her sixty-fifth birthday, they had been pressuring her to live with them

This was the sound she had heard when she'd been in the kitchen - this clatter.

Vivienne wondered if there had been a nuclear test, maybe that was what had shaken things up

But, no, she was stuck in the past: The Cold War was over, and nuclear tests hadn't been conducted out in the desert for a long time

Besides, the house hadn't shuddered just a minute ago; only the photos had been affected.

The noise was louder in the corridor than it had been in the living room

The electronic squeal began to warble faster, but it was no quieter, no less bone penetrating than it had been.

Less than ten minutes later, when the curtains opened again, the mirrors had been taken away, and the stage had been transformed into an ice rink; the second production number was done on skates against a winter backdrop so real that it made Elliot shiver.

She would have been lovely enough if her eyes had been dark, in harmony with the shade of her hair and skin, but they were crystalline blue

These things were as they always had been, since she had first come to work here, before Danny had died.

Neither window was open, and even if one had been raised, the night wasn't frigid enough to account for the chill.

Each was hung from the ceiling on a length of fishing line, and the upper end of each line was knotted to its own eyehook that had been screwed firmly into the dry wall

The legs at the foot rose three or four inches before crashing back into the casters, that had been put under them to protect the carpet

Gradually Vivienne's heartbeat subsided from the hard, frantic rhythm that it had been keeping for the past couple of minutes

Except, of course, that the boy who had once slept here had been dead for a year

She hadn't been to church in a long time

The sets and props had been moved from the main floor of the stage, and eight folding tables had been set up

Knowing this feast had been laid on for the party, few of those present had eaten dinner, and most of the dancers had eaten nothing since a light lunch

Several times, she encountered Elliot Stryker, and he seemed genuinely interested in learning how the splashy stage effects had been achieved

And it's been a long time since I've been this awkward about it."

She'd been asleep less than three hours.

She had to know if he'd been in the house, in Danny's room, without her knowledge or permission.

Danny's collection of paperbacks had been pulled from the bookcase and tossed into every corner

A poster of one of the movie monsters had been ripped apart; it hung from the wall in several pieces

The action figures had been knocked off the headboard

The closet doors were open, and all the clothes inside appeared to have been thrown on the floor

The game table had been overturned

Vivienne Neddler had been in to clean last evening, but this wasn't the kind of thing that Vivienne would be capable of doing

If the mess had been here when Vivienne arrived, the old woman would have cleaned it up and would have left a note about what she'd found

He's been drinking pretty regularly, but he's so deep in a trance that he can completely ignore the call of nature until - bingo! - He has a bladder spasm

When they were first married, he'd been fun, charming, easygoing, but he had not been that way with her in a long time.

They've been through a time warp and lost a couple of days

Her original intention had been to accuse him of ripping apart Danny's room; she had been prepared to come on strong, so that even if he didn't want her to know he'd done it, he might be rattled enough to reveal his guilt

But now, if she started making nasty accusations after he'd been so pleasant to her, she would seem to be a hysterical harpy, and if she still had any advantage left, she would quickly lose it.

At last, she said, "Some strange things have been happening at the house."

"You've never been the kind of person who makes enemies," he said

"Someone has been breaking into the house."

"I've been thinking about it the past few days

These last few days, as your show's been getting ready to open, I've had the feeling you might finally realize you need something more in life, something a lot more emotionally satisfying than whatever it is you can get out of just producing stage shows."

As she had struggled to move up from dancer to costumer to choreographer to lounge-revue coordinator to producer, Michael had been displeased with her commitment to work

She had been determined that neither of them would have reason to feel that his importance in her life had diminished

Danny had been wonderful; Danny had understood

The only way she could have held on to her husband would have been to abandon her new career, and she had refused to do that.

That was why he had been so charming

Standing before her in the sunshine, his white shirt shimmering with squiggles of reflected light that bounced off the parked cars, he favored her with that self-satisfied, superior smile that made her feel as cold as this winter day ought to have been.

For years, she had been filled with hurt and bitterness

Later, after Danny was dead, she'd repressed her feelings because she'd known that Michael had been truly suffering from the loss of his child, and she hadn't wanted to add to his misery

But now she vented some of the acid that had been eating at her for so long, cutting him off in midsentence.

Why on earth would I? What do you have to give me that I can't get elsewhere? You've never been much of a giver anyway, Michael

Finished telling him off, she felt pleasantly wrung out, as if some evil, nervous energy had been drained from her.

She was crying for all the things that might have been, and for what could never be again.

When she had suspected Michael of doing the dirty work, she had been disturbed and distressed, but she hadn't been frightened

She thought of the man in her nightmare, the man in black whose face had been lumpy with maggots, and the shadows in the corner of her office seemed darker and deeper than they had been a moment ago.

The laser whispered through twenty names, forty, sixty, seventy, without producing the lines about Danny that had been on the first printout

Tina waited until at least a hundred names had been listed before she decided that the system had been programmed to print the lines about Danny only one time, only on her office's first data request of the afternoon, and on no later call-up.

But the room had been warm when Tina had first come in to use the computer, and now it was cool

Nevertheless, the room was much cooler than it had been only minutes ago.

She intended to determine if the words about Danny had been previously programmed to print out on her machine or if they had been sent to her just seconds ago by someone at another computer in another office in the hotel's elaborately networked series of workstations.

Suddenly, as the screen began to fill with the same seven-line message that had just been wiped from it, Tina had enough

Could he be the man who'd been harassing her?

"Who could you possibly have been seeing? They've all gone home

Bill Jaborski had been a wilderness expert and a scoutmaster

She told him about the bizarre things that had been happening to her lately: the messages on Danny's chalkboard; the wreckage she'd found in the boy's room; the hateful, taunting words that appeared in the computer lists and on the monitor.

"Could the temperature change have been subjective?"

After all, you haven't been threatened."

She had to take another small sip of cognac before she was able to say what was on her mind, and she realized that he had been right about the liquor having little effect on her

She felt more relaxed than she'd been ten minutes ago, but she wasn't even slightly tipsy

Neither of us would have been anxious to view the body even if it had been in perfect shape, so we accepted the mortician's recommendations

"And where would he have been all this time if not..

It won't help you discover who's been harassing you."

"I mean, I thought it must have been a divorce or something."

"With me, of course, it's only been little more than a year since I've been alone

With you, it's been three years

He could not remember ever having been half so clumsy in the kitchen as he was this evening

"Then the drink you've been sipping on here."

She had a throaty laugh that was not unlike Nancy's had been.

The mushroom salad, the fettuccine Alfredo, and the zabaglione had been excellent

While Tina and Elliot had been joking in the kitchen, even before dinner had been completely prepared, she had begun to think they might go to bed together

She hadn't been to bed with any man but Michael in the past fourteen years, since she was nineteen

She hadn't been to bed with anyone at all for almost two years

Of course, during the first of those two years, she'd still been married to Michael and had felt compelled to remain faithful to him, even though a separation and then a divorce had been in the works, and even though he had not felt constrained by any similar moral sense

Later, with the stage show to produce and with poor Danny's death weighing heavily on her, she hadn't been in the mood for romance

She felt as if the two of them had been here, like this, locked in an embrace, many times before.

"Yet it's only been two days."

Tina realized that she had been wrong to think that celibacy should be a part of her period of mourning

He'd been trying to postpone her departure because he was afraid that he would never see her again after she drove off.

He was convinced that, with her arrival on the scene, he had been granted too much happiness, too fast, too soon, too easily

He was afraid Tina Evans would be taken away from him just as Nancy had been.

In Army Intelligence, Kennebeck had been a fair but always demanding superior officer.

A three-sided, fan-shaped tent had been erected on the back lawn, to one side of the sixty-foot pool, with the open side facing the house

In the process of trying to hurt his ex-wife, he'd waste several days of the court's time, and the end result would be exactly the same as if he'd never been given a chance to protest."

In freshly pressed slacks, a crisp blue shirt, a patterned tie, and a gray sports jacket, he might have been a professional hit man uncomfortably gotten up for the baptism of his Mafia don's grandchild

"Are you the bastards who've been harassing Tina?"

They appeared to be genuinely surprised by this news, and Elliot was pretty sure they weren't the people who had been trying to scare Tina

"What about the messages she's been getting?" Vince asked, still watching Elliot closely.

The truth of it isn't anything like the version everyone's been told

We haven't been told the details, not even half of them

She'd never been able to understand this morbid streak in him

Most of his friends had shared his avid interest in ghosts and ghouls; besides, the grotesque hadn't been his only interest, so she had decided not to worry about it.

His grisly head stood on the driver's seat beside him, grinning fiendishly, filled with malevolent life even though it had been brutally severed from his body.

If this was what Danny had read before going to bed at night, how had he been able to sleep so well? He'd always been a deep, unmoving sleeper, never troubled by bad dreams.

Curious about the story from which the illustration had been taken, Tina stepped to the box again to pluck out the graphic novel

The big man had been overconfident, certain that his six-inch advantage in height and his extra eighty pounds of muscle made him unbeatable

He had been wrong.

Evidently, he wasn't carrying a gun, and he was impressed by the speed and ease with which his partner had been taken out of action.

He found some small change, a comb, a wallet, and the sheaf of papers on which were typed the questions that Elliot had been expected to answer.

As far as Elliot was concerned, the absence of ID was more sinister than a collection of patently false papers would have been, because this absolute anonymity smacked of a secret police organization.

The one from which the cover painting had been drawn was sixteen pages long

In letters that were supposed to look as if they had been formed from rotting shroud cloth, the artist had emblazoned the title across the top of the first page, above a somber, well-detailed scene of a rain-swept graveyard

But Death decided that Kevin belonged to him, because the funeral had been held already and because the grave had been closed

To tell her that Danny had been buried alive?

He could not have been buried alive

The boy had been battered, burned, frozen, horribly mutilated in the crash, dead beyond any shadow of a doubt

Danny certainly had been dead when they had buried him.

And if, by some million-to-one chance, the boy had been alive when he'd been buried, why would it take an entire year for her to receive a vision from the spirit world?

Rule out all of this nonsense about the dream having been sent by some outside force

She had paged through only two of the magazines Danny had bought, the first two, when she had been trying to make up her mind whether such unusual reading material could have any harmful effects on him

It had been published only two years ago, long after she had decided that horror comics were harmless.

Her dream had been patterned after the images in the illustrated horror story

She was more able to believe that he was joking than that he had really been in danger

"Has anyone been around here this afternoon?"

He grabbed her arm, swung her away from the burning house, the sight of which affected her as much as if it had been a hypnotist's slowly swinging pocket watch.

As Elliot drove away from the burning house, his instinctual sense of danger was as sensitive as it had been in his military days

Tina had been looking back at her house

They're out right now, and there's nobody ever been here named Fitzpatrick."

Physically, he was still hard, tough; but mentally and emotionally, he was softer than he had been in his prime

Then, he'd had the resiliency of youth and had been less burdened with respect for death than he was now

In those days, it had been easy to play the hunter

He had taken pleasure in stalking human prey; hell, there had even been a measure of joy in being stalked, for it gave him the opportunity to prove himself by outwitting the hunter on his trail

Nevertheless, he was an intelligence agent a hell of a lot longer than he's been a judge, and I guess breeding tells

Elliot glanced in the rearview mirror, as he had been doing every minute or two since they'd turned onto Charleston Boulevard

for the past year I've been struggling to adjust to the fact that Danny died in that stupid, pointless accident

But now that it's happened, now that it's been thrust upon you, you're not entirely unhappy

In the rush to get out of her house before the gas explosion leveled it, he hadn't noticed that she'd been carrying anything

She had a round face, dimples, eyes that twinkled as if they had been waxed, and a Texas drawl

Have you been given, or has Mrs

Evans been given, any material relating to military research installations in the Sierra Nevada Mountains?

"Is that who's been in Danny's room? Did someone from Project Pandora write on the chalkboard..

He's probably been told only what he needs to know."

"I've been pondering that

There's a better than even chance he's been co-opted by Kennebeck's crowd

He smiled and asked Elliot if their dinner had been satisfactory, and Elliot said it had been fine, and the old man began to make change with slow, arthritic fingers.

She became aware of the familiar, spiritlike presence that had been in Angela's office when the computer had begun to operate by itself

The two words blasted out of the speakers in all corners of the diner with such incredible, bone-jarring force that it was difficult to believe that the machine had been built with the capability of pouring out sound with this excessive, unnerving power.

Her hands, which had been curled into tight fists, came open once more

God, yes! Better than I've been in a long time."

The windstorm was still in progress, but it was not raging as fiercely as it had been when Elliot and Tina had watched it through the restaurant window

Laden with dust and with the powdery white sand that had been swept in from the desert, the air abraded their faces and had an unpleasant taste.

In the Mercedes, in the darkness, with the doors locked, she said, "No wonder we haven't been able to figure it out!"

"We've been looking at this all wrong-"

No wonder we haven't been able to find a solution."

"Listen," she said excitedly, "we thought someone was sending me messages about Danny being alive just to rub my face in the fact that he was actually dead - or to let me know, in a roundabout fashion, that the way he died wasn't anything like what I'd been told

But those messages haven't been coming from a sadist

And they haven't been coming from someone who wants to expose the true story of the Sierra accident

"We've already been through this argument, and we rejected it," he reminded her.

"The game must have been rigged," Elliot said

Danny said he was sure Elmer wasn't going to come back because he'd been hit and killed by a truck

That's another way Danny's been trying to reach me

He's been sending me nightmares for the past few weeks

That's why they've been so much different from any dreams I've had before, so much stronger and more vivid."

"I've been listening," she said.

Damn it, I can't," he said, sounding like a priest whose faith had been deeply shaken

"That's exactly what I've been trained to do."

What had happened to Danny might still prove to be terrible, shattering, but she didn't think it would be as hard to accept as his "death" had been

Willis Bruckster was so sure he appeared dull and ordinary that he wouldn't have been surprised if a guard had looked at him and yawned.

But when Bruckster had come into the hotel thirty minutes ago, Evans had been chatting with the players at his blackjack table, cracking jokes, and grinning as if nothing of any importance had happened in his life lately.

It might have been a bitter divorce.

Bruckster hadn't been able to get close to Evans when the dealer left the blackjack pit at the beginning of the break

It had been committed in a sheltered space within the crowd, hidden by the killer's and the victim's bodies

Even if someone had been monitoring that area from an overhead camera, there would not have been much for him to see.

A thin film of moisture covered the victim's nose and lips and chin, but this was only the harmless medium in which the toxin had been suspended

She would have been frightened, terrified..

Christina Evans probably hadn't entertained a single doubt about the official explanation of the Sierra accident; she probably hadn't known a damned thing about Pandora when she had requested an exhumation, but her timing couldn't have been worse.

In the meantime, Network agents could have located a boy's body in the same state of decay, as Danny's corpse would have been if it had been locked in that coffin for the past year

Then the guilt-stricken mother could have been permitted one last, late, ghastly look at the remains of her son.

That would have been a complex operation, fraught with the peril of discovery

The risks would have been acceptable, however, and there wouldn't have been any need to kill anyone.

Part of this antagonism between them rose because they had been born into utterly different worlds and were equally proud of their origins - as well as disdainful of all others

Alexander, on the other hand, was the scion of a Pennsylvania family that had been wealthy and powerful for a hundred and fifty years, perhaps longer

Many of them had been Presidential appointees, occupying high-level posts in the federal government; a few had served on the President's cabinet, in half a dozen administrations, though none had ever deigned to run for an elective position

The famous Pennsylvania Alexander's had always been prominently associated with the struggle for minority civil rights, the Equal Rights Amendment, the crusade against capital punishment, and social idealisms of every variety

Harry had been surprised to discover that not all of the people in the espionage business shared his ultraconservative political views

Left-wingers and right-wingers differed about certain details, of course, but their only major point of contention centered on the identity of those who would be permitted to be a part of the privileged ruling class, once the power had been sufficiently centralized.

"If he thought he could get any help from the cops, he'd have been there already," Kennebeck said

"He's been a civilian for fifteen years

"But that's what I've been trying to tell you," Kennebeck said, pushing a lock of snow-white hair back from his forehead

Alexander put down the enameled cigarette box that he had been studying

"Have you been checking small craft leaving the airport?" Kennebeck asked.

"If it wasn't me, it would have been some other attorney

And he hasn't yet been identified in their airspace."

"That's what I've been trying to tell you

"That's a bit sloppy of him," Kennebeck said, "considering how clever he's been so far."

When they had landed, they'd been alert for unusual activity on the runway and in the private-craft docking yard - suspicious vehicles, an unusual number of ground crewmen - but they had seen nothing out of the ordinary

Carlton Dombey felt as though he had been swallowed alive and was trapped now in the devil's gut.

The raw, damp wind was stronger now than it had been a short while ago, when they'd landed at the airport

There wasn't much of a chance that a trap had been set for them so soon

The stranger had been lying in the snow, watching them, waiting; now he had a wet hole in his chest

At least one man had been waiting out here in the snow.

Evidently the people in the funeral home were not aware that their man outside had been eliminated

"We have been followed," Tina said.

He felt along the inner faces of the fenders, around the tire wells, where a transponder could have been stuck in place quickly and easily

It's been a hard day's night."

Unable to prove his identity, he was required to pay for both nights in advance, which he did, taking the money from a wad of cash he'd stuck in his pocket rather than from the wallet that supposedly had been stolen.

He considered the requisitioning of this executive jet to be one of his most important accomplishments in the three years that he had been chief of the Nevada bureau of the Network

After long and arduous lobbying of the director, Alexander had at last been awarded this small jet; and immediately he put two full-time pilots, ex-military men, on the payroll of the Nevada bureau.

Then, six years ago, the Network had been formed, and the President had given George the task of developing a reliable South American bureau of the new intelligence agency

That had been exciting, challenging, important work

George had been directly responsible for the expenditure of tens of millions of dollars and, eventually, for the control of hundreds of agents in a dozen countries

After three years the President had declared himself delighted with the accomplishments in South America, and he had asked George to take charge of one of the Network's domestic bureaus - Nevada - which had been terribly mismanaged

He could never hope to receive the public acclaim and honor that had been heaped upon other men in his family

More shocking still to the sensibilities of patrician Easterners like them: on three occasions, in South America, Alexander had been in a position where it had been necessary for him to pull the assassin's trigger himself

He had enjoyed those murders so immensely, had been so profoundly thrilled by them, that he had, by choice, performed the executioner's role on half a dozen other assignments

His targets had always been spies, traitors; more than a few of them had been cold-blooded killers themselves

All of his life, for reasons he had never been able to fully ascertain, he had been fascinated by death, intrigued by the form and nature and possibilities of it, enthralled by the study and theory of its meaning

His taste for violence would not have been tolerated for long in the old FBI - perhaps not even in the new, thoroughly politicized FBI - or in many other congressionally monitored police agencies

Her expression would have been appropriate to the face of a gypsy fortune-teller peering with a clairvoyant frown at tealeaves.

His hair was razor-cut, and he groomed his mustache so meticulously that it almost appeared to have been painted on his upper lip.

The table, the chairs, the credenza, and the hutch all glowed warmly because of the prodigious amount of furniture polish that had been buffed into the wood with even more vigor than he had employed when shining his dazzling shoes

"We've gotten this far because we've kept moving and we've been aggressive," Tina said

Considering the high price that they had paid for the pathetically insufficient information they had obtained, he couldn't tolerate the prospect of all their pain and fear and anxiety having been for naught.

It's been parked there overnight."

The deciduous trees, stripped of every leaf, appeared to be charred, as if this particular winter had been more severe than others and as cataclysmic as a fire

Perhaps they would have been smarter to turn around, go back to Reno, find another hotel room, and get a fresh start in the morning

Ahead, on the left, a break appeared in the bank of snow that had been heaped up by the plows

It was unpaved, but a solid bed had been built over the years by the generous and repeated application of oil and gravel.

the growth rate of the parietal spot is directly proportional to the number of injections the boy's been given

"It hasn't been plowed," he said.

"A lot of traffic's been through here recently."

Kurt Hensen was standing in front of Alexander's desk, picking through the junk that had been brought over from the hotel

And although Stryker had done some heavy military service, that had been ages ago

This broad shelf in the mountainside couldn't have been as large or as regularly shaped in its natural state as it was now: three hundred yards wide, two hundred yards deep, almost a perfect rectangle

The ground had been rolled as flat as an airfield and then paved

Apparently, the door could be opened only from within, after those, seeking entrance had been scrutinized by the camera that hung over the portal.

"How'd you get in here?" the older guard asked, dropping his weapon as he'd been ordered

The corridors had been deserted then

Tina had the sickening feeling that someone had been about to step out, had sensed their presence, and had gone away to get help.

Danny seemed able to work miracles with inanimate objects, but he could not control people, like the guard upstairs, whom Elliot had been forced to shoot

Zachariah regarded her as he might have done if she had been dead on the floor and then miraculously risen.

I knew this whole business was too dirty to end any way but disaster." He sighed, as if a great weight had been lifted from him

My country's far from perfect, but what's been done to Danny Evans isn't something that my country would approve of

He's been waiting a long time

He's been calling you for a long time."

For the past six or seven weeks, he hasn't been able to keep anything but liquids in his stomach

But they were sunken, ringed by unhealthy dark skin, which was not the way they had always been

"Right now he's on the verge of starving to death because it's been so long since he's been able to keep any food in his stomach

He has been very infectious, off and on, but not at the moment

For almost two months, they've been reinfecting his body over and over again, letting the virus wear him down, trying to discover how many times he can lick it before it finally licks him

He was a rag doll with only meager scraps of stuffing, a fragile and timorous creature, nothing whatsoever like the happy, vibrant, active boy that he had once been

Alexander was increasingly confident that they would reach the installation unscathed, and he was aware that even Kurt Hensen, who hated flying with Morgan, was calmer now than he had been ten minutes ago.

No effort had been made to keep him from chafing.

"That's the same question I've been wrestling with ever since Danny got caught in the gears

For as long as he could remember, he had been fascinated with death, with the mechanics and the meaning of it, and he had longed to know what it was like on the other side - without, of course, wishing to commit himself to a one-way journey there

He couldn't keep anything in his stomach because recently they've been reinfecting him, testing him to destruction, like I said

Could this spot on Danny's brain have anything to do with the boy's psychic power? Were his latent psychic abilities brought to the surface as a direct result of the man-made virus with which he had been repeatedly infected? Crazy - but it didn't seem any more unlikely than that he had fallen victim to Project Pandora in the first place

It had been only fifteen or twenty feet above the pavement, but it rapidly climbed forty, fifty, sixty feet.

An edge of fear sharpened his voice, fear that hadn't been audible throughout the entire, nightmarish trip through the mountains

Therefore, I will devote what space I am given here to this novel itself and to the savage, brutal, cruel, maddening, insane, inane, nonsensical, stupid, bewildering, toxic, bloodcurdling, lip-chafing, toenail-curling experience of working with a major television network to adapt this novel, and three others, as part of a program that would have been called The Dean Koontz Theater or Dean Koontz Presents or possibly Here's Dean! or even Koontzapalooza

They chose it as one of four of my novels to be developed as two-hour TV movies that would launch Popcorn, Sugar Babies, Dum Dums, and Dean or whatever the series would have been titled

They might have been talented folks who, in the past, had produced works to rival those of Shakespeare and who, in the future, might produce thousands of pages of sheer genius

All I know is that during the fourteen or sixteen - or seven thousand - months that we worked together, through countless story meetings in the development executive's office, I was never sure that any of my writing confreres had read the complete novel that he or she was adapting - or understood what had been read

I received a death threat by phone the night before the arbitration - I can't say for certain that it was from the writer; the voice was so deep that it might have been his mother - and the next morning the law firm handling the studio's case assured me that they had taken extra security measures for the meeting

In each subsequent meeting, one or the other would show up to take story notes on their latest draft, while the missing partner would always have been waylaid by an emergency of one kind or another: a broken washing machine and a flooded laundry room, the sudden-onset illness of a cat with symptoms suggesting (to me) demonic possession, the death of a beloved aunt, the death of a beloved uncle, the death of a beloved neighbor (I began to worry that merely by associating with these women, decades would be shorn from my life span), migraine headaches, and an unfortunate encounter with an angry Big Foot in a long line at the DMV

After reviewing the chaos that he had inherited, the new head of network decided that even though Darkfall was an exciting script, he didn't want to make a movie "about little creatures living in the walls." He decided that we would film the other script I had done; for which I received primary credit but not sole credit because of Writers Guild rules virtually guaranteeing the first writer some kind of credit as long as that writer's drafts had been composed in one of the languages spoken on Earth.

I long ago wore out the three pairs of shoes that I was able to buy with my after-expenses and after-tax income from the project which, had it come to fruition, might have been titled I Think There's a Rat Chewing My Foot in Dean Koontz's Theater

I only know that he was about to start experiments he had been preparing for some months

I turned and was violently sick in front of a young policeman, whose face was as green as mine must have been.

They took away some of his instruments, but told the commissaire that the most interesting documents and instruments had been destroyed.

The police laboratory at Lyons reported that Andre's head had been wrapped in a piece of velvet when it was smashed by the hammer

After a few days in prison, Helene had been moved to a nearby asylum for the criminally insane

She had been very willing to speak about her life with my brother - which seemed a happy and ordinary one - up to the time he died

But she would not explain why it had been used twice

Andre had not been the absent-minded sort of professor

She was allowed to go into the garden during certain hours of the day, and had been given a little square where she could grow flowers

'For one ten-millionth of a second, that ashtray has been completely disintegrated

'And I remember your friend, Professor Augier, saying that the only possible explanation was that the stones had been disintegrated outside the house, had then come through the walls, and been reintegrated before hitting the floor or opposite walls

'I've been working my way through many problems, and I haven't been very pleasant to live with

When he did tell me, Miquette had been successfully transmitted five or six times.

Slowly, the monster, the thing that had been my husband, covered its head, got up and found its way into the other room.

But the eyes! Where the eyes should have been, there were two brown shapes the size of saucers

The police would never understand but the professors would, and they must not! That had been Andre's last wish.

'Ah, yes I heard that Madame Delambre had been writing a lot, but we could find nothing but the short note informing us that she was taking her own life.'

Later, when she was reading the amount collected on the church notice board, she saw that no pound note had been received

I had been in a good mood for writing, but now I felt uncomfortable

'There's been some trouble about him,' said Lettice

There had already been a disagreement between them.

'There has also been some talk about that young artist, Mr Redding, hasn't there?' said Miss Wetherby.

Sadly, our dinner only proved Griselda had been right when she'd said that the more she tried, the worse things went

I told him that people had been saying that since the beginning of time, and a strange little smile touched his lips

'He has been here since a quarter past six.'

And Mr Redding has been here?'

'He's dead - he's been dead for half an hour, I think.'

'He has been dead just over half an hour, I think

I had been trying to speak

And shot in the vicarage study? But you, dear Vicar, were not here at the time?' I explained where I had been.

'I didn't know there had been an arrest.'

'Oh, dear! I have been very mistaken...'

'But if there was an argument,' I argued, 'the shot may have been fired in sudden anger, and Lawrence might have been very upset afterwards about what he had done.'

'I think, I'll go home and tell Anne that Lawrence has been arrested.' She went out of the French window again.

He had been dead much longer than that.'

'It must have been after six - quarter past - something like that.'

Oh, could it have been...?' She stopped, pale with excitement.

It must have been Miss Cram because her skirt was so short.'

'It might have been in her handbag.'

Mary has been with him for two years.'

No, Miss Marple didn't think it had been louder, just different

'And Dr Haydock is certain that the murder could not have been committed at the time you say you did it

'I've been a fool,' Lawrence said

'Who has been to your cottage lately?'

'Then it couldn't have been Dr Stone,' said Lawrence.

There were no fingerprints on the telephone because it had been cleaned

If the call had just been a joke, the fingerprints would not have been wiped off so carefully.'

But later she had realized that if her husband had been sitting at the desk, she would not have seen him.

It was his opinion that the colonel had been shot at approximately 6.20 to 6.30 - certainly not later than 6.35.

Well, of course, there must have been a shot, because the gentleman was found shot - but she had not heard it.

Mrs Lestrange had been asked to give evidence, but a medical certificate, signed by Dr Haydock, said that she was too ill to attend.

Do you know last Thursday - the day of the murder - I had been to a meeting in London

'That means that the murderer must have been inside this house - perhaps even had a drink with me.'

'I have never been in a house where they had a murder,' Mary said

And then, before he's even been buried, his daughter comes here and says I don't do my work properly.'

Here Protheroe had sat when he had been shot

It was a picture of someone, but the face had been cut in such a violent way that it was unrecognizable.

If we'd been planning to go away together, and then Lucius had died - it would be so awful now

'But she has only been in my study once since the murder, and then she was dressed in black and did not wear blue earrings.'

Someone had been here since Lawrence and myself.

'Well, it seems to me that the only way this silver could be sold would be if it had been replaced by copies

'You have been up at Old Hall today, haven't you?'

They all looked as though they had been written by the same person, and they all said, 'Urgent'

Your wife has been seen coming out of Mr Redding's cottage in a secretive manner

In fact, I had been in love with him.'

'She has been ill,' I said.

'It must have been nearly six o'clock

It must have been her sneeze Clara heard.'

'But the man might have been hiding in the bushes,' said Mrs Price Ridley

I've been trying to protect Mrs Lestrange from anything that might upset her

'But,' I said, 'it has been explained

He'd only been there for five minutes

The second possibility is, of course, that he was sitting at the desk writing a note, but it must have been a different note from the one that was found

'You mean that after he had been shown in, he went out again and came back later?'

It has been good to have this little talk.'

'I have been stupid - very, very stupid

I explained that Hawes had been ill with sleeping sickness.

Mr Redding has been proved to be innocent.'

It upset all my ideas and made me think he was not guilty - when up to then I had been sure that he was.'

'We know everything that Redding was doing up to 6.50 and Dr Haydock says Protheroe could not have been shot then.'

But Miss Marple just smiled and continued, 'I liked Anne and Lawrence, so when they both confessed in that silly way - well, I was happy that I had been wrong

She's been Archer's girlfriend for a long time, and she was alone in the house when it happened! And then, of course, there was Lettice - wanting freedom and money to do as she liked

It said that Griselda had been seen leaving Lawrence Redding's cottage at twenty past six on the day of the murder

'But by Thursday afternoon the crime had been very carefully planned

So perhaps the sneeze that Mrs Price Ridley's servant heard might have been the shot? But anyway, Mrs Protheroe and Mr Redding went into the studio together - and then realized, of course, that I would not leave my garden until I saw them come out again!'

Because if they had really said goodbye to each other they would have been sad

She and Dennis had heard that Mrs Price Ridley had been gossiping about the vicar and the church money

And if he hadn't, he would have been found guilty of murder

His first thought, I imagine, must have been to run away

And it proved that Miss Marple had been right in every detail.

She wandered into my study and told me that she had always been sure her stepmother was involved

Saying that she had lost her yellow hat had been an excuse to search my study

You've been very kind to me always - you and Griselda.'

Miss Cram, though, had been cleared of any crime

An enormous hole had been made and the Earth had been thrown violently in every direction, forming piles that could be seen two kilometres away.

A large part of the cylinder had now been uncovered, although its lower end was still hidden in the side of the pit.

A few minutes earlier there had only been three things in my mind: the great size of the night and space and nature, my own weakness and unhappiness, and the near approach of death

'Haven't you just been there?' the men asked.

If, on that Friday night, you had drawn a circle at a distance of five kilometres from Horsell Common, I doubt if there would have been one human being outside it, unless it was a relation of Stent, whose emotions or habits were affected by the new arrivals

Several officers had been on the common earlier in the day and one was reported to be missing

He told me that during the night the Martians had been surrounded by soldiers and that field-guns were expected.

'New attempts have been made to signal, but without success,' was how the evening papers later described it

I had been very excited all day and I was not sorry that I had to return to Maybury

It seemed that his neck had been broken

In the hurry to leave it had been left open

There were a few people still alive there; most of them were very frightened, and many of them had been burnt

Destruction had never been so total in the history of war

If I had been alone, I think I would have taken my chance and gone straight across country

I wanted to start at once, but the soldier had been in wars before and knew better than that

I've been hiding

If my foot had slipped, it would have been the end

'You have been asking for water for the last hour,' he said.

'Are these creatures everywhere? Has the Earth been given to them?'

Machine guns are completely useless against them, and field-guns have been put out of action

People in West Surrey are very worried and defenses have been built to slow the Martians' movement towards London.

He learned that several unusual telegrams had been received in the morning from Byfleet and Chertsey stations, but that these had suddenly stopped

Quite a number of people who had been expecting friends to arrive by train were standing at the station

'They come from Weybridge and Walton, and they said guns have been heard at Chertsey, heavy firing, and that soldiers told them to move out at once because the Martians are corning

In Wellington Street my brother met two men selling newspapers which had just been printed

Many field-guns, the report said, had been hidden around the country near Horsell Common, and especially between the Woking district and London

Five of the machines had been seen moving towards the Thames and one, by a lucky chance, had been destroyed

In other cases the shells had missed, and the guns had at once been destroyed by the Heat-Rays

The Martians had been defeated, my brother read

There had never been such a large or fast movement of war equipment in England before.

My brother spoke to several of the refugees but none could give him any news of Woking, except one man who said that it had been totally destroyed the previous night.

Along the edge of Regent's Park there were as many romantic couples as there had ever been

The Ripley gunners had never been in action before

It seemed that one of its three legs had been broken

There had been no explosion, no answer from the guns

From there we could see the searchlights on Richmond Hill and Kingston Hill moving in the sky, and at about eleven the windows shook, and we heard the sound of the large guns that had been put in position there

All the railway lines north of the Thames had been warned by midnight on Sunday, and trains were being filled

The police who had been sent to direct the traffic, exhausted and angry, were fighting with the people they had been called out to protect.

He heard their screams and, hurrying round the corner, saw a couple of men trying to pull them out of the little cart which they had been driving, while a third held onto the frightened horse's head

It seemed that she had had a gun all the time, but it had been under her seat when they were attacked

She had never been out of England before; she would rather die than be friendless in a foreign country

She had been growing increasingly upset and depressed during the two days' journey

Things had always been safe in Stanmore

And then a quick movement of the steamboat (which had turned to avoid being hit) threw him off the seat on which he had been standing

All through this time I and the curate had been hiding in the empty house where we went to escape the Black Smoke

Once again, on the Surrey side, there was black dust that had once been smoke, and some dead bodies - a number of them near the approach to the station.

We stood shocked by our danger, and if the Martian had been looking down we would have died immediately

And then the light came, not through the window, which was filled with earth from the garden, but through a small hole that had been knocked in the wall

Through this I was able to see into what had been, only the previous night, a quiet road

The earth all around had been thrown up over the neighbouring houses

The front part of it had been destroyed completely

He was fat, red- faced, middle-aged, well-dressed; perhaps earlier he had been important

The curate, who had been lying silently with his arms over his head, looked up as I passed, cried out quite loudly and came running after me.

I had been asleep but in a moment I was awake

'I have been still too long,' he said, loud enough for the Martians to hear, 'and now I must tell the world

I hesitated, then with a rush of desperate courage, and with my heart beating violently, I climbed to the top of the pile of earth in which I had been buried.

When I had last seen this part of Sheen, it had been a street of comfortable white and red houses

Now the neighboring ones had all been destroyed

Here I moved through areas which had been totally destroyed and others which were totally undamaged; houses with their curtains and their doors closed

I went into a couple of the houses, looking for food, but all of it had already been taken

The place had already been searched and emptied

We had been unable to co-operate

If I had known, I would have left him at Walton, but I had not been able to see ahead

In the road that runs from the top of Putney Hill to Wimbledon many things had been left behind by the crowds that ran towards London on the Sunday night after the fighting began

Certainly, unless they had been killed, she and my cousins would have run away.

But - it's only been sixteen days and your hair is grey.' He looked over his shoulder suddenly

'That's what I've been thinking.' he said

I've been thinking about the drains

They had been dead for many days, so I hurried quickly past them

One or two had been partly eaten by dogs.

In some places thieves had been at work, but usually only at the food and wine shops

A jeweller's window had been broken open in one place, but the thief had clearly been chased away, because a number of gold chains and a watch were lying on the pavement

It seemed that it had been driven blindly straight at the house, and had been turned over when the house fell on it.

And all around it, some in their overturned war-machines and some in building-machines, and ten of them lying in a row, were the Martians - dead! They had been killed by germs against which their systems could not fight; killed, after all man's machines had failed, by the smallest things that God has put on this Earth.

Across the pit, on its further edge, lay the great flying-machine which they had been testing in our heavier atmosphere when disease and death stopped them

One of them had died as it had been crying to its friends

And as I looked at it, and realized that the shadows had been rolled back, and that people might still live in its streets, and that this dear city of mine might be once more alive and powerful again, I felt such emotion that I was very close to tears.

In a year, I thought, we would rebuild all that had been destroyed.

Two days after I was imprisoned it had been destroyed, with every person in it, by a Martian

My hosts tried to change my mind but at last, promising faithfully to return to them, I went out again into the streets that had lately been so dark and strange and empty.

Among other things, the newspaper said that the 'Secret of Flying' had been discovered

The door had been broken, and it was opening slowly as I approached.

'No one has been here for ten days

Seven months ago, when these planets were close together, faint, dark marks appeared on photographs which suggested that a cylinder had been fired from one to the other.

look it has been mended twice with silver bands that probably cost more than the pipe itself

'I have been married for three years, and my wife and I were very happy until last Monday

'"Where have you been, Effie?" I asked as she entered

'"I have not been here before."

I discovered that my wife had been to the cottage again, so I went to the cottage

When I had walked into the library, I had been a happy, healthy man

In the maze, they met some people who had been there for forty-five minutes

'Then there has been an earthquake,' George said

Harris didn't know it, but he had been sitting next to a big hole

Some of the work in my office has been there for years

I've been thinking she manages very well

And she has been very good to me.'

But then he has been coming back late for the past few weeks

'Connie, what's the matter? You've been crying again.'

Mercy has not been seen for many days

'Has Mercy been here?' asked James.

do you mean the army officer who has just been given the job of..

Don't worry, I've done nothing wrong - but there's been an accident

'After the story you told me this morning, I've been reading my mother's old letters,' said Miss Halcombe

She kissed my hand and said, 'I'll always wear white! It'll help me to remember how kind you've been to me!' Poor little soul!'"

One day, when I had been at Limmeridge for three months, Miss Halcombe asked me to walk with her in the garden

He told us that Mrs Catherick, Anne's mother, had been a servant in his family for many years before leaving to get married

Her father had been my good friend, and his daughter was like a daughter to me

'You've been so honest that I value you even more than I did before.'

His actions towards Anne Catherick and her mother have been generous

The Count has been Sir Percival's friend for years

She spoke of how kind Mother had been to her and said that she wanted to die and be buried beside Mother

Laura's father (her brother) had been angry with her for marrying an Italian

'You've been very kind to my sister and me

He told me that Count Fosco had accompanied the body from London and had gone to the funeral (which my uncle himself had been too ill to go to)

I wondered why so little space had been given to the record of Sir Felix's marriage, but apart from that there was nothing unusual about it

Nobody could understand why Sir Percival had been in the vestry

He told everyone in the village that Sir P had been my lover and that Anne was Sir P's child

Then he said, 'You've been very helpful to me, so now I'll help you

But, when he and the doctor were outside the house, the Count changed his mind and sent the doctor away, saying that he'd been mistaken.'

The mystery of the woman in white had finally been solved

Throughout her long illness, I had been like a brother to her

The Count's face - which had been happy a few seconds before - was suddenly full of fear! He stood up and quickly left the theatre

Over the year of my investigation, I had asked the people involved to provide the narratives that have been presented here

The people who had been at the funeral were all invited to come and see that Laura, Lady Glyde, was in fact alive and well

A few weeks later, I read in the newspaper that the Count had been murdered in Paris

The murderer had not been caught, but witnesses described him as a blond man with a scar on his cheek

If we study the history of women's fight for equality with men, education has always been an important topic

Her books have been very important for women's rights, and they are still important today.

There have been many women who have fought for human rights in different countries

It uses a lot of social media - like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter - and has been led by the MeToo movement.

In her book, Memoirs from a Women's Prison (1983), she wrote, "Danger has been a part of my life ever since I picked up a pen and wrote

The third and fourth waves of feminism, from the 1990s until today, have often been about women's fight against sexual harassment and assault, and the fight to be "themselves"

Many men in the film and TV business have been accused of harassing women, and of sexual assault.

War is usually a bad thing, but it has sometimes been good for women and work

The fight for work and equal pay has not been won

There have been women in science for many hundreds of years

There have been many women leaders - women like Indira Gandhi in India, Golda Meir in Israel, and Margaret Thatcher and Theresa May in the United Kingdom

There has also been Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia, Julia Gillard in Australia, Tarja Halonen in Finland and Angela Merkel in Germany

Also, politics has always been a career for men, and when women become politicians, some people say bad things to them.

She is still the only woman who has been on a journey into space alone

The history of women's empowerment is long, and a lot of progress has been made

At the same time, famous men in the film business, like Harvey Weinstein, were accused of harassing and assaulting women - and men in TV and politics have also been accused of these crimes

They asked for money for women who have been sexually assaulted

17,700,000 women say that they have been sexually harassed or assaulted since 1998.

But thanks to the women in this book - and others - women are now much more equal in society than they have ever been before.