As with the self-banished Geddie, it was nothing less than the artful
smiles of lovely woman that had driven Johnny Atwood to the desperate
expedient of accepting office under a despised Federal Government
so that he might go far, far away and never see again the false, fair
face that had wrecked his young life.
How can the absence of the indefinite article before lovely woman be justified ?
Then down the coast, tacking close to shore, slowly swam a little
sloop, white-winged like some snowy sea fowl.
Why there's no "the" before "shore"