Gargoyles

He walked along often figuring it that way and understanding something that had no words, living with something that was like a strange phantom in a great dark deep. This phanto...

A great day for the commonwealth of Illinois. A day surfeited with climaxes. Winona Johnson wept and the courteous voice of Basine pressed for facts. Here was a mine of facts, h...

He felt sorry for her. When he had married Henrietta she had been the only one who had understood. He could always remember what she had said at the wedding. It was the only thi...

This self was the Basine he was continually creating--a Basine that was not based upon deeds or truths or facts but upon ideals. It was an ideal Basine--a nobly edited version o...

Words welled into Basine's mind. An almost uncontrollable impulse to confound his host with a violent denunciation struggled in him. He would tell this traction baron what manne...

"Yes, I've figured it out, Lief. You're a terrible liar. When you say you love people, the crowd, you're a terrible liar then. You don't love the crowd at all. What is your love...

When they were alone Ramsey became a different man. He talked to her usually about people he had met in her house. At such times he was master of caricature. Their absurdities,...

He stared glumly at the back of the chauffeur's head. A nuisance. A damned nuisance. His mind played with contrasts. A few hours ago she had been shameless. Now she sat weeping....

He talked with a kittenish banter in his voice as if he were patting a child of five on the head. But he held her hand during his entire speech and his soft finger tips pressed...

Basine left them. His heart was heavy, uncomfortable. He sat on the bench frowning at the scene. Eager lawyers whispering; a woman in a green hat holding a handkerchief to her e...

"You mustn't think I'm a blockhead, mother, about these people here tonight, for instance. Just because I get along with them. I'll give you my theory of people. We were discuss...

Doris allowed matters to drift through the year. One winter night Lindstrum, invited innocently to occupy the sofa in the studio rather than to tackle the storm-bound transporta...

She said nothing but let herself come closer. She was adroit and he remained unaware that she had pressed herself tautly against him. He was concerned entirely with the purity o...

Mrs. Basine stood up. It might be better to go away for a while. Despite her daughter's momentary recovery her fears had increased. She felt something curious about Doris. But p...

His fidelity to his wife, inspired more by this fear of hurting her than by the social cowardice which involved the idea of detection, had become a fetish with him. The less he...

There was no great tragedy in this. He was bored with his imagination because he had run through the repertoire of his fancies too often and so, slowly, his days grew more and m...

The intimidating superiority was the body under the glass cover of the coffin. It would have been easier in a church. Funerals were much less of a strain in a church and there w...

Thus the presence of Aubrey, their son, became incongruous. And Aubrey himself helped this illusion. He was a young man who looked incongruous. He seemed like a hoax or at least...

These intuitions whose articulation would have been entirely unintelligable to Fanny sent the delicious tremble through her body. Immediately the two separate Aubreys of her min...

The calendars said--1900. It was growing warm. George Cornelius Basine emerged from Madam Minnie's house of ill fame at five o'clock on a Sabbath May morning. He was twenty-five...

"It's ridiculous," he continued. She nodded helplessly. "I'll see you Tuesday evening," he added. There was a pause. Then, "There's something I'd like to discuss with you. Very...

As a matter of fact the commissioners were playing for time. A species of stage fright had overcome them. Each of them had arrived filled with a sense of high purpose and benign...

"I live down the street a ways," Keegan answered. An almost womanish shyness was in his manner. "Been hearing and reading a lot about you, George." He lowered his voice. "You su...