Phroso: A Romance

A man’s mind can move on more than one line; even the most engrossing selfish care may fail entirely to occupy it or to shut out intruding rivals. Not only should I have been wi...

I sat for some moments in stupefied despair. The fall from hope was so great and sudden, the revelation of my blind folly so cruel. But this mood did not last long. Soon I was b...

I have learnt on my way through the world how dangerous a thing is a conceit of a man’s own cleverness; and among the most striking lessons of this truth stands one which Mourak...

Until the moment of our parting came, I had no idea that Beatrice Hipgrave felt my going at all. She was not in the habit of displaying emotion, and I was much surprised at the...

Yes, Mouraki was dangerous, very dangerous: now that he had regained his self-control, most dangerous. His designs against me would be limited only by the bounds which I had tak...

The death-cry that Mouraki Pasha uttered under Demetri’s avenging knife seemed to touch a spring and set us all a-moving. The sound of it turned the soldiers’ idle lassitude int...

At the dinner-table Mouraki proved a charming companion. His official reserve and pride vanished; he called me by my name simply, and extorted a like mode of address from my mod...

The next morning came bright and beautiful, with a pleasant fresh breeze. It was just the day for a run in the yacht. So I thought when I mounted on deck at eight o’clock in the...

She came up to me swiftly and without hesitation. I had looked for some embarrassment, but there was none in her face. She met my eyes full and square, and began to speak to me...

At last the whirligig seemed to have taken a turn in my favour, the revolutions of the wheel at last to have brought my fortune uppermost. For the sight of Francesca in Panayiot...

On the evening of the next day I was once again with my faithful friends on board the little yacht. Furious with the trick Mouraki had played them, they rejoiced openly at his f...

There is a matter on my conscience which I cannot excuse but may as well confess. To deceive a maiden is a very sore thing, so sore that it had made us all hot against Constanti...

Helplessness brings its own peculiar consolation. After a week’s planning and scheming what you will do to the enemy, it is a kind of relief to sit with hands in pockets and won...

Was this a pantomime? For a moment I declared angrily that it was no better; but the next instant changed the current of my feelings, transforming irritation into alarm and perp...

It was between eight and nine o’clock when the first of the enemy appeared on the road in the persons of two smart fellows in gleaming kilts and braided jackets. It was no more...

I was glad. As soon as I was alone and had time to think over Mouraki’s _coup_ I was glad. He had ended a false position into which my weakness had led me; he had rendered it po...

In most families--at least among those that have any recorded history to boast of or to deplore--there is a point of family pride: with one it is grace of manner; with another,...

‘I do not know, my lord. It happened in the crowd. It was a mistake. My dear lord had yielded what they asked. Yet some one--no, by heaven, my lord, I do not know who--stabbed h...

The effect of my remark was curious. Denny flushed scarlet and flung his whip down on the table; the others stood for a moment motionless, then turned tail and slunk back to the...

Some modern thinkers, I believe--or perhaps, to be quite safe, I had better say some modern talkers--profess to estimate the value of life by reference to the number of distinct...

‘Quot homines tot sententiæ;’ so many men, so many fancies. My fancy was for an island. Perhaps boyhood’s glamour hung yet round sea-girt rocks, and ‘faery lands forlorn,’ still...

The boat still moved a little from the impulse of my last stroke, and we floated slowly past Mouraki who stood, like some great sea-bird on the rock. To his cynical question--fo...

We did not fight. My friend the captain proposed to rely on his British _confrère’s_ sense of justice and of the courtesy which should obtain between two great and friendly nati...