Jocelyn

A light laugh came floating into the sunshine through the green shutters of a room in the Hôtel Milano. It grated on Giles Legard, who sat on the stone terrace outside, face to...

Early frogs croaked in the _Val de Menton_, a fragrant acrid whiff of smoke from burning eucalyptus-wood floated up from the unkempt dwellings behind the hotel. The green shutte...

Jocelyn Ley’s mother died when she was born. She was an only child, and her father, who was in the army, began immediately to idolise her with an abrupt and well-bred idolatry.

The Legards left Mentone very early the following day; it was necessary for Irma to drive the five miles to the villa in the cool of the morning. Giles had failed to see Jocelyn...

Giles rode over the next morning. He found Jocelyn and Mrs. Travis in the garden of the hotel talking with a young Englishman. They came forward to meet him, but he felt at once...

Giles paced up and down his verandah restlessly; he was awaiting Jocelyn’s arrival. His wife had sent an invitation to her and to Mrs. Travis to come and see the villa, with the...

Jocelyn had strolled away by herself--she had a longing to be alone with the sea. She did not know exactly what it was that she wanted, but it seemed to her that the sea would g...

The sun sank, leaving a pale glory of silver-green light over the clear-cut edges of the mountain range. Masses of heavy, purple clouds threatened the silver halo, and in the re...

In her bedroom Jocelyn was thinking. The inner door stood open, and from the next room came a stream of murmured comments, broken now and then by a mumble, denoting pins in the...

Two figures came slowly down the hill from the heights of Belinda to the Pont St. Louis. Darkness was closing in upon them. In front, vanishing in the dusk along the white road,...

Nielsen sat at one of many little marble-topped tables outside a café. It was dark, and the lights of the street avenue shone dubiously on either side through the foliage of the...

The sun staring into his room awoke him. As he stretched himself, the sight of his own half-dressed figure brought him with a cruel jerk to a sense of reality.

In the room there was a faint, sweet, sickly smell of flowers and of drugs, the scent that pervades the rooms of invalids. The sun was still blazing outside, and through the dra...

She was sitting on a stony bank covered with wild thyme, just above the road; her soft mauve blouse and the little stone-coloured toque on her head were in exact tone with their...

Once hidden by a group of trees, Giles broke into a run. The road stared in front of him, white and implacable; the dust rose from it, choking him. He bent forward, lifting his...

In the early hours of the sleepy afternoon, when the June sun blazes, and the air outside is heavy with heat, the coolest place in Monte Carlo is the Casino.

It was the third day since Giles had left her on the Cornice Road, and Jocelyn had not seen him since. She had been told of his wife’s sudden death. It had seemed to her like a...

Jocelyn remained standing where she was. Half-an-hour ago she would have run to Giles and flung herself into his arms, now she stood and looked at him, her hands clasped in fron...

It was the last day of March in the following year. A day when spring drew its breath even in London streets. The evening was drawing in, but the daylight still crept colourless...

Jocelyn rose from her seat, stretching out her hands, as Nielsen came slowly forward from the door. The two peered at each other in the dusk. The servant, going out, turned up t...

Upon one Sunday afternoon a few weeks later, Jocelyn made an expedition with Nielsen to Watts’s Studio in the Melbury Road. It was one of the last days of April. There was a sof...

Upon the same Sunday afternoon, in a small port on the eastern Spanish seaboard, Giles Legard leant over the rail of a long, forlorn-looking, wooden jetty. Against the black pil...

Travelling night and day, Legard arrived in London late on Wednesday afternoon. Except upon one occasion, for a few days, he had not been in England for twelve years. It was str...

Would she be in? Would she see him? Alone? He felt that he would almost rather not see her at all than in the presence of other people. His heart beat till he felt sick, and he...

Giles stepped outside, and turned indifferently to the left. A few paces down the street was a public-house, he turned into it, and calling for a glass of brandy drank it off at...

In the reach of the Thames, just above Sonning Lock, a single sculling boat drifted slowly with the stream; though it was only the second week in May the river glowed with a sof...

At Port Said the _Rangoon_ was coaling. Legions of black and brown men swarmed at her from the unkempt rafts alongside. Half naked, gleaming with perspiration, chattering and la...

He woke from restless and bitter dreams, feeling stiff and a little cold. The moon was sinking in the sky, and only patches of white light fell now upon the decks. He raised him...