Flames

Even so huge a city as London, full of so many varying personalities and clashing interests, assumes upon certain days of the year a particular and characteristic aspect, arisin...

Valentine closed the door behind him and stood by it, looking at Cuckoo gravely. She had pushed herself up on the sofa, using her elbows as a lever, and in an awkward attitude,...

Cuckoo read it, trembling. In her early days telegrams came often to her door--"Meet me at Verrey's, four-thirty"; "Piccadilly Circus, five o'clock to-day." Such messages flicke...

Julian had resolved to keep his compact with the lady of the feathers. He had learned partially to understand the curious and beautiful attitude which her mind had assumed towar...

Gaining no reply to his call, Julian grew alarmed. He sprang up from the table and turned on the electric light. Valentine was leaning back nervelessly in his chair. His face wa...

The things we do apparently by chance often have a curious applicability to the things we have thought. John the Baptist was sent to prepare the way of the Lord. These thoughts...

That evening Julian drove Cuckoo down Victoria Street. On the way they scarcely spoke. The doctor, summoned by a messenger, was there before them. He, although ignorant of what...

"We must all take coffee," he cried. "It will give us impetus, vitality, so that as the old year dies we may live more swiftly, more strongly. I like to feel that my life is inc...

Rather reluctantly, Julian acted on the advice of Doctor Levillier and went out of town for a week on the following day. He took his way to the sea, and tried to feel normal in...

From that night, and almost imperceptibly, the relations existing between Valentine and Julian slightly changed. It seemed to Julian as if a door previously shut in his friend's...

Julian's utterance about the flame that held him with the lady of the feathers struck Dr. Levillier forcibly at the time it was made, and remained in his mind. He could not fail...

Snow fell, melodramatically, on the year's death-night. During the day Valentine occupied himself oddly in decorating his flat for the evening. But although he thus seemed to fa...

The Russian Grand Duke, whose malady was mainly composed of two ingredients, unlimited wealth and almost unlimited power, was slow in recovering, and slower still in making up h...

When a naturally calm, clear, and courageous mind finds itself besieged by what seem hysterical fancies, it is troubled and perplexed, and is inclined to take drastic measures t...

When Julian returned from Angelo's the next morning he found lying upon the breakfast table a note, and, after the custom of many people, before opening it he read the address o...

Julian was painfully excited, but he strove to repress all evidences of his inward turmoil as he began to pull out a table and arrange it in the centre of the room. This act thr...

Julian was curiously touched by his interview in the Marylebone Road, and he did not fail to recount it to Valentine, whose delicate imagination would, he felt certain, feel the...

When Julian left the Marylebone Road that night it was nearly ten o'clock. He was quite sober, and looked preternaturally grave as he opened the little gate and stepped out into...

Although Dr. Levillier's visit to Victoria Street had been such a painful one, he had no intention whatever of letting the two young men drift away out of his acquaintance. He w...

Julian was a favourite in Harley Street, so Lawler did not hesitate to show him into the doctor's very private room,--a room dedicated to ease, and to the cultivation of a busy...

One chill morning of earliest February, a stirring of Jessie at the foot of her bed wakened Cuckoo from a short and uneasy sleep. She opened her eyes to the faint light that fil...

Down in her dreary kitchen, among her dingy pots and pans, Mrs. Brigg was filled with an anger that seemed to her as righteous as the anger of a Puritan against Museum-opening o...

Julian did not come again to the house in the Marylebone Road for at least a fortnight, and during that time the lady of the feathers was left alone with her life and with her s...

Although Cuckoo knew well that Julian carried out his intention of going home after he left her in Piccadilly, the fact of his being there, of his making one of that crowd, that...

Opening the door, they found themselves in a squalid passage. A room on the left was fronted by a sort of counter, above which was a long window giving onto the passage, and as...

Doctor Levillier was not a materialist, although he concerned himself much with the functions of the body, and with that strange spider's web of tingling threads which we call t...

Doctor Levillier grew more puzzled day by day. His observation of Valentine taught him only one thing certainly, and beyond possibility of doubt and that was the death of the yo...

On the following night Valentine sat waiting for Julian's arrival in his drawing-room, which looked out upon Victoria Street, whereas the only window of the tentroom opened upon...

Valentine spoke without any emotion or sympathy, and the absence of feeling from his voice seemed almost to bring a certain slight vexation into his manner. The love of Cuckoo,...

"Isn't it an extraordinary thing," Julian said, on the following evening, "that if you meet a man once in London you keep knocking up against him day after day? While, if--"

The thin afternoon light of an indefinite spring day shone over the Marylebone Road. A heavy warmth was in the air, and the weather was peculiarly windless, but the sun only sho...

Most of us need an opposite to sit by the hearth with us sometimes, and to stir us to wonder or to war. Julian was Valentine's singularly complete and perfect opposite, in natur...

That drive in the night was taken in silence. Julian, a crumpled heap of degraded humanity, slept. Cuckoo watched over him, half supporting him with one thin arm. Exultation sho...

Julian spoke almost wistfully, and as if he wanted Valentine to sweep away the suggestion. Last night they had been comrades. To-day, in the light and in the calm of afternoon,...

Doctor Levillier and Julian bade each other good-bye on the doorstep. The doctor hailed a hansom, but Julian preferred to walk. He wished to be alone, to feel the cold touch of...

Their hands met and their eyes. And then Levillier had an instant sensation that he shook hands with a stranger. He looked upon the face of Valentine certainly, but he was aware...

When the doctor arrived at the Victoria Street flat Valentine's man answered his ring. Wade had been with Valentine for many years and was always famous for his great devotion t...

Now an awful loneliness, like the loneliness of the grave, fell round Cuckoo. Like Judas, she could have gone out and hanged herself, but for one thing, the love in her heart th...

Valentine and Julian sat together in the tentroom at night, as they sat together many months ago, when Julian confessed his secret and Valentine expressed his strange desire to...

It chanced that for three or four days after the night of the theatre expedition Valentine and Julian did not meet. They were rarely apart for so long a period, and each was mov...

It was at this point in his career that Julian, just for a time, began keenly to observe Valentine, and to wonder if there were hidden depths in his friend which he had never so...

"Damn that mat!" he exclaimed. "I say, Cuckoo, who the--?" The question faded on his lips as he saw Doctor Levillier, on whom he gazed with a vacant surprise that, added to the...

They had not been sitting for five minutes before Valentine felt that the atmosphere was becoming impregnated with a certain heaviness of mystery, with a certain steady and unyi...

That evening Cuckoo remained in a condition of mingled terror and resolution. There was something about Valentine that filled her, not merely with alarm, but with a nameless hor...

Refinement had more power over the soul of Valentine Cresswell than religion. It governed him with a curious ease of supremacy, and held him back without effort from most of the...

And, as the clock struck twelve, Valentine turned off the electric light, and they sat down with their hands upon the table. The room was only very dimly illuminated by the fire...