Hermia Suydam

After Helen left, Hermia went up to her room. There she did what she never failed to do the moment she entered her bedroom—walked over to the glass and looked at herself. She ha...

Quintard insisted that, in spite of Miss Starbruck’s open disapproval of him, she was his proudest conquest; and her abuse was certainly growing milder. She rarely failed to app...

Thirteen years passed. Bessie had three of her desired children and a nice little flat in Brooklyn. Reverses and trials had come, but on the whole Mordaunt was fairly prosperous...

Hermia’s imagination in its turn demanded a safety-valve; she found it necessary, occasionally, to put her dreams into substance and sequence. In other words she wrote. Not pros...

When Crosby Suydam died and left exactly enough money to bury himself, his widow returned to New York, and, taking her two little girls by the hand, presented herself at the old...

A few weeks later Hermia gave a dinner to Cryder. The other guests were Mr. Overton, Mr. Simms, Alan Emmet, a young author who combined the literary and the sensational in a man...

“I want to talk to you,” he said. “I have wanted to talk to you ever since I met you, but I was in such a bad humor the other night that I would not inflict you. Are you ever al...

She stood motionless for a few moments, then went up-stairs. As she crossed the hall she saw that the front-door was open, but she was too listless to close it. She went to her...

Hermia looked at her reflection that evening with a smile. The shadowed emerald of her velvet gown made her hair glow like vibrant flame. The color wandered through her cheeks a...

A year later Hermia was sitting by her library fire one afternoon when the butler threw back the tapestry that hung over the door and announced Helen Simms. Hermia rose to greet...

Hermia saw a great deal of Quintard. They walked together, they rode together, and circumstances frequently forced them into each other’s society for hours at a time. She liked...

Two days later Hermia went to a large dinner, and Quintard took her in. She was moody and absent. She felt nervous, she said, and he need not be surprised if he found her very c...

She thrust her feet into a pair of night-slippers, drew a dressing-gown about her, and went into the next room. Mrs. Dykman, as she entered a moment later, raised her level brows.

She met Quintard the next afternoon at a tea. She was standing with a group of people when he joined her. After a moment he asked her to go over to the other side of the room an...

Helen Simms was a young woman who had cantered gracefully under the flick of society’s whip since the night of her début. Occasionally she broke into a trot, and anon into a run...

A few weeks later Frank made an announcement which gave Hermia a genuine thrill of delight. A fellow bank-clerk was obliged to spend some months in California, and had offered M...

She met Quintard next at one of Mrs. Dykman’s _musicales_. That fashionable lady was fond of entertaining, and Hermia was delighted to pay the bills. If it pleased Mrs. Dykman t...

Had Hermia been a bride on her wedding-night she could not have felt more trepidation than when she stood on the threshold of her first interview with her new self. She was to m...

Hermia sat by the window waiting for Quintard. It was the saddest hour of the day—that hour of dusk when the lamplighter trudges on his rounds. How many women have sat in their...

A woman never moralizes until she has committed an immoral act. From the moment she voluntarily accepts it until the moment she casts it aside, she may do distasteful duty to th...

He called one morning soon after and spent the entire day with her. He had finished the last of the stories and he read it to her. The tale was a tragic one, and had a wild, sav...

The next afternoon Hermia was sitting in the library with Miss Starbruck when Helen came in. Hermia greeted her eagerly. Helen always diverted her mind. Perversely, also, she wa...

When Hermia awoke there was a rattle of wagons in the street, and the dawn struggled through the curtains. There was a chill in the air and she shivered a little. She lay recall...

Only the nineteenth century could have evolved Cryder. The infancy of a democratic civilization produces giants. The giants build hot-houses, and a flower, delicate, beautiful,...

“Hermia,” she said, after she had disposed herself on one of the severe, high-backed chairs, “it is quite time for you to adopt some slight regard for the conventionalities. You...

Cryder did not come the next day or evening, nor did he write. At first Hermia experienced a mild fear that he was ill; but Helen Simms called the following morning and said, en...

The next afternoon Cryder came again. Hermia received him this time in the hall which, with its Gothic roof, its pictured windows, its walls ribbed and dark, and its organ, look...

She began to have an absurdly married feeling. When she had made up her mind to drift on the wave she had chosen, she had consoled herself with the thought that, if love was a d...

One day a bank clerk came up to the quiet house with a message to John Suydam. As he was leaving he met Bessie in the hall. Each did what wiser heads had done before—they fell w...

They were sitting together one evening in the jungle. The night was hot and the windows were open, but the curtains were drawn. The lamps were hidden behind the palms, and the r...

She began to hate Cryder with a mortal hatred. When he left her he had flown down the perspective of her past, but now he seemed to be crawling back—nearer—nearer—

A few evenings later Quintard came with a portion of his book, which he had had type-written for her. While he amused himself with the many rare volumes on the library shelves,...

Hermia attended her uncle’s funeral because Frank came over and insisted upon it; and she and her brother-in-law were the only mourners. But few people were in the church, a cir...

The front door had closed after the last guest, the butler had turned down the lights in the hall, Miss Starbruck had gone up-stairs, and Hermia was standing by the library fire...

Quintard, after an absence of five years, had returned to New York to find Hermia Suydam the sensation of the year. He saw her first at the Metropolitan Opera-House, and, overhe...

The thirty or forty thousand dollars over John Suydam’s million had been left to Bessie. She immediately bought a charming house on St. Mark’s Avenue—it did not occur to her to...

Hermia was in bed one morning when her maid brought her the papers. She opened one, then sat suddenly erect, and the paper shook in her hands. She read the headlines through twi...

Hermia gave a little supper after the opera, and, when the last guest had gone, she went up to her room and sank down in a heap before her bedroom fire. As she stared at the coa...

A few days later Hermia had a singular experience. Bessie’s youngest child, her only boy, died. Hermia carried her sister from the room as the boy breathed his last, and laid he...

_To say that the performance of the action is the result of his free will is to say that he determines the cohesion of the psychical states which arouse the action; and as these...