Home Again

If London was dreary when Lufa left it, it was worse than dreary to Walter now that she was gone from his world; gone from the universe past and future both--for the Lufa he had...

In his room, Walter threw himself in a chair, and sat without thinking, for the mental presence of Lufa was hardly thought Gradually Sefton’s story revived, and for a time displ...

“I have got a little poem here--if you can call it a poem--a few lines I wrote last Christmas: would you mind looking at it, and telling me if it is anything?”

Walter had passed a very troubled night, and was worse, though he thought himself better. His friend looked in to see him before going to the office, and told him that he would...

Mr. Colman and his adopted daughter were fast friends--so fast and so near that they could talk together about Walter, though but the adoptive brother of the one, and the real s...

Walter drew his table near the fire, and sat down to concoct a brief note of thanks and farewell to his hostess, informing her that he was compelled to leave in haste. He found...

A broad bench went round the circular wall; Lufa seated herself on it, and Walter placed himself beside her, as near as he dared. For some moments he did not speak. She looked u...

When Walter arrived, he found the paradise under snow. But the summer had only run in-doors, and there was blooming. Lufa was kinder than ever, but, he fancied, a little embarra...

Lufa was there--alone! He durst not approach her, but if he seated himself in a certain corner, he could see her and she him! He did not, however, apprehend that the corner he h...

Within a year Walter began to be known--to the profession, at least--as a promising writer; and was already, to more than a few, personally known as a very agreeable, gentlemanl...

So far better as to be able to talk, Walter one day told Molly the strange dream which, as he looked back, seemed to fill the whole time almost from his leaving his lodging to h...

Walter slept until nearly noon, then rose, very weary, but with a gladness at his heart. On his table were spread such pages as must please Lufa! His thoughts went back to the p...

It was the afternoon when Sullivan’s letter, on the lower left hand corner of which he had written _Har., Sul.,_ arrived. Mr. Colman had gone to a town at some distance, whence...

From Comberidge a dog-cart had been sent to meet him at the railway. He drove up the avenue as the sun was setting behind the house, and its long, low, terraced front received h...

“You shall have the penny. I will pay you with your own coin. I keep all the pennies I win of you. What do you do with those you win of me?”

The days passed; week after week went down the hill--or, is it not rather, up the hill?--and out of sight; the moon kept on changelessly changing; and at length Walter was well,...

London was very hot, very dusty, and as dreary as Walter had anticipated. When Lufa went, the moon went out of the heavens, the stars chose banishment with their mistress, and o...

By this Walter was in love with Lady Lufa. He said as much to himself, at least; and in truth he was almost possessed with her. Every thought that rose in his mind began at once...

Every morning, a man may say, Calls him up with a new birth-day; Every day is a little life, Sunny with love, stormy with strife; Every life is a little death, From which too so...

In the morning, as Walter was dressing, he received a copy of his poems which he had taken in sheets to a book-binder to put in morocco for Lady Lufa. Pleased like a child, he h...

Days passed, and things went on much the same, Walter not daring to tell the girl all he felt, but seizing every opportunity of a _tête-à-tête_, and missing none of the proximit...

Walter found that compulsory employment, while taking from, his time for genial labor, quickened his desire after it, increased his faculty for it, and made him more careful of...

In the dusk of the old-fashioned best room of a farm-house, in the faint glow of the buried sun through the sods of his July grave, sat two elderly persons, dimly visible, breat...

I need hardly say he found his first lonely evening dull. He was not yet capable of looking beneath the look of anything. He felt cabined, cribbed, confined. His world-clothing...

Birds when they leave the nest carry, I presume, their hearts with them; not a few humans leave their hearts behind them--too often, alas! to be sent for afterward. The whole ro...

While the elders thus conversed in the dusky drawing-room, where the smell of the old roses almost overpowered that of the new, another couple sat in a little homely bower in th...

A big stone fell suddenly into the smooth pool of Walter’s conditions. A letter from his father brought the news that the bank where he had deposited his savings had proved but...

“It was three days, if I remember,” began Sefton, “after my military friend left, when one night I found myself alone in the drawing-room, just waked from a brown study. No one...

He went in the morning--the real, not the conventional--and was shown into the drawing-room, his heart beating with expectation. Lady Lufa was alone, and already at the piano. S...

It was the second spring, and Molly and Walter sat again in the twilighted garden. Walter had just come home from his day’s work; he had been plowing. He was a broad-shouldered,...

Walter did not know where he was going when he turned from Lufa. It was solitude he sought, without being aware that he sought anything. Must it not be a deep spiritual instinct...

Walter was the very antipode of the Molly he counted commonplace, one outside the region of poetry; she had a passion for turning a _think_ into a thing. She had a strong instin...