"Piracy"

On the northern fringe of Soho there lies a not ill-favoured little street, about which play many grubby children and barrel-organs, and on whose pathways not even the most dist...

So much has been said of the Mont Agel Restaurant mainly because it had always had a considerable place in the life and affections of one whose fortunes this history must closel...

It will, of course, be obvious that Ivor Marlay’s life would have been quite different if he had gone up to the University of Oxford in the ordinary way. Those who have been to...

Aunt Moira was the only relation Ivor had, that he was aware of; and towards the end of the year after he left school she sickened of a cancer and was tortured to death. But bef...

Of course there was always Aunt Percy, as there always had been: Aunt Moira’s old friend and man of affairs, and now Ivor’s trustee and guardian--Mr. Percy Wyndham Fletcher, sen...

During the first two years after Aunt Moira’s death, then, Ivor’s only real companion was Aunt Percy: an inadequate one, how sweet and understanding soever his nature, for that...

The world which Ivor then touched and tasted so carelessly was a vastly different world from that with which he was surrounded, in his fuller maturity, on the 1st May, 1921, at...

Mrs. Gray occurred suddenly, as has been said, but in accustomed surroundings: at one of those parties, in fact, that are nightly scattered about a corner of London, and are, th...

It was about three o’clock now; the ballroom looked a vast place in which three couples were entirely surrounded by parquet floor; and the band was become ecstatic with wearines...

In the days that followed, Ivor Marlay brooded upon her a great deal. He showed his youth, that fantastic youth of a young man’s secret longings, in the manner and absurdity of...

“Ivor, I’m so glad!” she welcomed him simply, the next night at half-past eight. She made no mention of the “dinner-party.” He and she were the dinner-party. Colonel Gray was ag...

It was difficult for Ivor, at three-and-twenty, to understand Magdalen; for she was so dangerously simple, so deplorably civilised, so utterly childish. He had realised her more...

From that memorable night in July when Ivor first dined with Magdalen he almost literally saw no one else during the ensuing twelve months and more--unless Gerald Trevor happene...

A year had passed, from one July day to its elder brother. And Ivor had not realised the wonder of that special day in July, he had no head for dates--until, calling to see her...

That August, Ivor Marlay’s car--as swift and handsome a two-seater as any could be at that primitive time of motoring--became almost an institution to the little boys along the...

In January, 1914, Ivor caught a cold in the head. He had always been remarkably immune from such little ailments, and had only once in his life been ill, of a vicious pneumonia...

The days of crisis passed. Dr. Harvey confided to Trevor that it was touch-and-go, but Ivor, in that occasional clarity of intense fever, had no thought of death. One morning, a...

In the first month of the year 1919, when the world, released at last from the epidemic of flags, was racked by the epidemic of influenza (then the most present of the many plag...

One very cold and overcast afternoon towards the end of that January, he was walking up one of the lanes that skirted the parkland of the Kare estate. The lane led gently up the...

He sat a while over his port that night. He contemplated Virginia. A strange woman she is, he thought. Every woman has a legend, there is a legend to every woman, but what is Vi...

Late in the afternoon of the day following the meeting in the little lane, as Ivor sat reading over the fire in the sitting-room, Turner announced: “Lady Tarlyon, sir.” And ther...

Virginia came only once again. Four nights later, a little after ten o’clock. Ivor, his book laid aside, was pacing the room in the suddenly restless way which was growing on hi...

Virginia was certainly right about the trains from Paris to the south being packed: there was not a sleeping-car to be had for months to come, and for an ordinary seat one had t...

At the last moment only George Tarlyon, Mrs. Chester, and Hugo Cypress motored to Monte Carlo. Major Cypress, authority on Forestry as he was, was even more of an authority on a...

George Tarlyon entered his wife’s bedroom fairly early the next morning. There was a door connecting their rooms, but he came in by the ordinary door; for when they had entered...

On that fourth morning, towards noon, Ivor was taking the air on the rather unkempt lawn. No one else seemed to be about that morning, no one had as yet come out of the long, lo...

No car, not even such a one as Lady Tarlyon’s, can reach Paris from the south within a day, or even within two days without particular preparation; and besides, it is a chilly k...

Naturally, they did not now hurry to Paris: or hurry anywhither, for the matter of that. They had no plans, there was no hurry, the weather was perfect; and the world was far to...

The pact was made, then: there was to be no talk of “arrangements” until the autumn, it was to be a clear summer of--“unreason,” Virginia teased him. So they had no thought of r...

Their pact was to outlaw themselves from England and all men, from the March day when they arrived in Paris until October. But one cannot be undisturbed in the heart of Paris: w...

But the “sick little pain” was not to be tamed into regularity so easily as all that, and it cared nothing for pacts. Virginia’s body was rebellious of Virginia’s heart. And Lon...

But Virginia didn’t die. Ian Black saw to that. But he told Ivor, downstairs in the waiting-room of the Wimpole Street nursing-home where Ivor spent many distressed hours, that...

But, it later appeared, that was not all that had interested her. “Oh, one’s been thinking such a lot!” she told Ivor weakly, when he saw her a few afternoons later.

Until she was fairly strong Virginia was not allowed to see people--except, of course, Ivor, who sat with her for a while in the afternoons, and sometimes in the evenings. But w...

On the morning of the day on which they were to dine at the Mont Agel--Virginia having said that she would risk it, muffled there and back in the car--Ivor in Upper Brook Street...

When, very soon after, Turner received his master’s command to pack “things,” he did not delay; for though he had seen his master darkly furious before now, he did not remember...

But, of course, Turner did not need to call him; and Ivor was striding along the road to Hungerford by eight o’clock. He had plenty of time in which to do the just over two mile...

Towards midnight on the night of the 1st of May, 1921: at the sign of the Mont Agel: and, at this moment, under the passing glance of the polite and amiable M. Stutz--who never...

Once in the hall of the house she did not look round at him: her steps rang sharply on the stone flags as she passed to a door at the far end of the wide and sombre hall of ston...

They were back on the other side of the closed folding-doors: almost as they had been before, standing together as on an island in artificial twilight. The occasion was not, som...

They walked. Dawn still lingered, and the night was gray and wan, yet it was clear with the clarity of scudding gray clouds far above the slower moving destinies of mankind. The...