Helena Brett's Career

Men are peculiar about their troubles. Woman, popularly thought to be a sieve with secrets, will crush a worry down, grapple silently and fight with it, nor ever let her very ne...

be fool enough! Home was very nice, of course, but horribly monotonous. She might read novels now, oh yes; the ones that Mother chose; but it was just the others that she longed...

Helena, when a year's passing had worn away the novelty of keeping house and made its process slower, was naturally rather bored at times, when Hubert was shut up with his work....

Gradually, however, she got a grip of the rough lines of her whole duty. At first it had been difficult, for she was not methodical by nature; but now it all seemed natural, the...

Nobody, he told himself, could be a better little housekeeper than Helena, no little home more fresh and dainty than their own: but though she never worried him, cleverly adapti...

The man who ought to marry was no more pleased to hear it than most of his kind. He scowled angrily: then smiled, as though contempt were a more fit reply. He was tall, broad, f...

If Hubert had known how difficult a job it was to get married, he would never have attempted it. Or so at least he told himself. All Boyd's advice, all his own misgivings about...

Geoffrey Alison felt very well content as he rang the bell and hastily fluffed out his hair. He was the bringer of good tidings and everything in general was going as it ought t...

An Ethical Society might pass a winter's evening in this debate: Does it need more strength to endure failure or to bear success? The dangers upon either road stand out easily,...

Conscious as she was that something had changed in her attitude towards her husband's moods and work, those tyrants of her married life to which till now she had bowed down so h...

"Yes," he replied; "but that means I shall be home all the earlier. The dinner begins at seven and I shan't make a long speech--trust me--so you can expect me back not later tha...

But this life of a housekeeper--how could she endure it after what had been? Hubert's only comments were aroused by letters, which his humorous friends still continued to send,...

To Helena the most terrible part about her husband's attitude was his astounding calmness. If he had but raged and stormed, she could have endured it. She might even have explai...

Hubert Brett could never quite escape from business; he analysed himself too much. His action sprung from impulse, education, ancestry, whatever source philosophers may choose t...

Hubert meanwhile was enjoying quite another sort of artistic evening. On first arrival, indeed, at the Club (which proved to meet in a Hotel Coffee Room), he found himself wonde...

It was not a comfortable meal, this tea, and though Helena no less than Ruth knew it to be the prelude to a scene, neither could feel much regret when Hubert with clumsy ill-eas...

Thomas Blatchley (which downright English names his mother and father did not give him in his baptism) was accustomed to boast that he was not an old-fashioned publisher. He wis...

Helena's oppression, as of some impending blow, refused to disappear. She could not believe, whatever Geoffrey Alison might say, that their secret could be kept until the end. E...

It is both easy and comforting to divide men simply into opposites. Honest, dishonest; truthful, lying; clean, dirty;--what a lot of worry it undoubtedly prevents. You trust one...

Helena certainly had small ambition towards the life political, even as anything no more exalted than a latch-key voter. She had been compelled to read politics in Devonshire bu...

"Both for you, sir!" said Lily with the air of an old friend, entering the drawing-room at nine o'clock two evenings later. She held out on a silver tray, the wedding gift of Ke...

He sat at his desk, his hands stretched forward to hold open a paper laid before him. Helena even observed the wrapper from which it had come, rolled up quite tight beside the b...

What a splendid, encouraging night it had been! Those last and most important speakers were if anything even more enthusiastic about all his novels. It was nice to get into touc...

"I accept," she cried excitedly, almost before he had got inside the door. "I accept Blatchley's offer. The book is growing splendidly. I've done two chapters and I see it all."

Poor old Hubert! She was glad now, oh so glad, that she had spared him. It had been on her tongue yesterday, when he was so contemptuous about her book being popular claptrap, h...

Helena unfolded the slip, pasted on its blue half-sheet, and began to read it, thoroughly engrossed. She seemed forgetful of Geoffrey Alison, who in turn watched her with hardly...

In one sense she had no great opinion of Geoffrey Alison, although she liked to have him as her friend. She did not respect him, did not think him manly, would never be swayed b...

Helena had never thought much about marriage. There was no reason indeed why she should, for she was young and to her it still appeared, like death to a small child, as somethin...

Helena, rebuffed, was quite determined to make no more appeals: and he was silent, that mockery of talk in front of Lily over, except that now and then he would throw out questi...

Helena came to the conclusion that her mother had been right in one point: life was difficult. She decided further that it was the Mrs. Herbertsons who caused the trouble. Thing...

V. ROUTINE VI. GROWTH VII. THE CULT OF USELESSNESS VIII. A SCENE IN THE HOME IX. CINDERELLA X. HONOUR XI. PINK PAPERS AND ST. ANTHONY XII. DEVILS XIII. SECRETS XIV. WAS IT WORTH...

XVIII. ZOË XIX. BUSINESS XX. PLEASURE XXI. EXPOSURE XXII. THE IRON IN THE SOUL XXIII. SECRET NUMBER TWO XXIV. BATTLE ROYAL XXV. THE BROKEN TRIANGLE XXVI. TACT XXVII. THE TWO WAY...