At the Gate of Samaria

It was a severe room, scrupulously neat. Along one side ran a bookcase, with beaded glass doors, containing, as one might see by peering through the spaces, the collected, unrea...

When the eager young soul starts out unaided to solve the riddle of life, it meets with many paradoxes that admit of no solution, and many sordid simplicities that only unfamili...

Few people, in an outburst of enthusiasm, would select the King's Road, Chelsea, as an ideal locality to reside in. It is an important thoroughfare, no doubt, but it lacks nobil...

When Winifred had gone Clytie took an omnibus to Cheyne Walk, where some friends of hers lived, and after her visit returned to her solitary dinner. It argued some strength of m...

John Kent, antiquarian, scientist, Bohemian, and assistant curator in the British Museum, dwelt in the attics, far above the limit of the stair carpet. By the time you had reach...

“Oh, the crowd that's coming--fossilised London, with figures like amphoras and faces like old coins. It's the principle of assimilation, I suppose. And they'll talk as if there...

The friendship between them ripened imperceptibly. Each day brought its tiny thread linking them together, so gradually, so subtly, that it was not until long afterwards that th...

The summer came. Clytie went abroad with the Farquharsons, through the old towns of Normandy and Brittany. Kent joined them at St. Malo, and spent his month's holiday with them....

The long autumn months rolled on, bringing little new to Clytie or to Kent. Clytie continued to paint her small _genre_ pictures, but with a more certain touch, a restraint whic...

One day, about this time, Kent was walking home from the Museum. His spirits had by no means lightened since his conversation with Wither, and he strode along moodily, trying to...

The atmosphere of Durdleham was uninspiring. Clytie could make no progress with her picture, and at last she laid it aside in despair. She had set her heart upon painting it, an...

He was lying curled up, as usual, on the sofa, smoking a cigarette. Kent was brooding over the fire. Fairfax had been rallying him from a doctor's point of view, and he had answ...

It was an evening in mid-February that Clytie went to a dance given by the Redgraves in their large house in St. John's Wood. Redgrave met her almost as soon as she arrived in t...

The unexpected always happens, often inopportunely. Winifred had risen from the ground by the stove and was standing miserably before her easel when a knock was heard at the stu...

A great writer has remarked, that between the acting of a dreadful thing and the first motion, all the interim is like a phantasma or a hideous dream, and that the state of man...

Perhaps if they had remained in Bordighera the intoxication would have lasted longer. But as our lives are hemmed in by infinite possibilities, to each of which is strung its in...

Thornton went alone, carrying with him his wife's excuses and regrets, and returned to her in high spirits. When she was able to get about again the Claverings had left Paris fo...

The last three days of their stay in Paris were marked by a return on the part of Thornton to his old devotion. He declined invitations ruthlessly, spent almost the whole of his...

On the day after this conversation Clytie was surprised by an announcement from Durdleham that Mrs. Blather and Janet were suddenly coming to town and would avail themselves of...

Thornton returned in due time. The autumn session began. The weeks and months passed. Their relations remained the same as when they had parted in the summer. Towards Clytie he...

Thus it had happened with Clytie during Thornton's absence. There came a morning at the end of the Old Year when the snow and sleet dashing against the window could be dimly hea...

Each lay awake that night, thinking. To Clytie the revelation of Kent's love was dazing. The sense of her own dulness in never having pierced the heart of his mystery was even m...

The next morning, after writing her letters and attending to her household duties, Clytie went into her studio with the praiseworthy intention of stimulating the artistic impuls...

Suddenly Clytie rose to her feet and left the studio. As she moved a strange weight seemed to lie upon her limbs. It was a physical effort to drag herself up the stairs to her b...

Clytie's last words rang in Kent's ears all night. She loved him. She had surrendered herself to his kiss, she had told him her heart in plain, unequivocal language. In the firs...

Two years passed, outwardly uneventful, yet momentous in the development of inner life. Her marriage sometimes appeared to Clytie as a far-away episode, a kind of dream state in...