Possession

Published September 30, 1925 Second Printing (before Publication), Sept. 26, 1925 Third Printing October 20, 1925 Fourth Printing November 14, 1925 Fifth Printing November 25, 1...

She knew no reason for this outburst of weeping. If there had been a reason she would not have locked herself in her room to weep until she had no more tears. She could not say,...

“It’s about Lily,” began Mrs. Tolliver. “I know Lily is beautiful. She’s very kind and pleasant ... but there are things about her that aren’t nice. In some ways Lily is a loose...

Ellen went to the piano and played a Venetian Sketch and To a Waterlily. She and Miss Ogilvie considered such music pap. From choice she would not have played it, but she unders...

The car in which Clarence sat, like all cars bound from the East across the mountains into the fertile and prosperous Midlands, was crowded. He was not a man gifted with great c...

And then it occurred to him that at this very moment he must be passing the Tollivers’ house, and poking his head out of the cab window, he saw that there was still a light in t...

The days passed slowly and meanwhile Ellen made no effort to see her cousin. This Mrs. Tolliver observed with astonishment, setting it down in her hopeful way as proof that the...

For Fergus exerted upon her a strange effect of softening. His fanciful mind she alone understood, and there were times in the long winter evenings when it was to him alone that...

For a time there was a silence during which Ellen proceeded with the unpacking of her bag. Reverently, almost with an air of worship, she took out from among her own threadbare...

What she would have done next was a matter for speculation, but before she had opportunity to act there rang through the silent house the sound of the doorbell being pushed viol...

“You see, Clarence and two friends of his (a Mr. Bunce and a Mr. Wyck) shared it before I came and now we have it to ourselves, because his two friends kindly moved elsewhere. M...

“Besides,” she continued, “the day will come when I must go to Paris.... You see, I will have to polish off there ... I can live with Lily. It won’t cost anything. You see, we c...

With the arrival of Lorna Vale the excitement reached its peak; even the gipsies played more wildly. She was an actress! And in those days it was impossible to imagine an actres...

Sabine laughed softly and with a hint of wickedness in her voice. “You don’t know women ... how queer they can be. Besides....” And she indicated with a nod of her red head the...

To this abrupt statement, Clarence found no answer. He yielded quietly and, presently, on the nights when Ellen played in the great house on Murray Hill, he found himself going...

She played for them the Moonlight Sonata and while she played, she became conscious again of the curious, breathless way in which Richard Callendar listened. It seemed, for a ti...

One bright afternoon in May they walked all the way from Sherry’s through the park to the Babylon Arms. It was a soft day when the park appeared veritably to reflect its greenne...

“I don’t know what is to be done about it ...” continued Mrs. Callendar, “because I don’t know everything.... In a case like this, one must know everything in order to make sens...

“You have lied to me ...” he was saying. “You have never cared at all....” And again the reproach. “You are like all your women ... cold ... magnificent ... not worthy of love.”...

On the afternoon of the wedding the temptation was not to be overcome. For a long time she fought it and at last, putting on a large hat and a veil she descended from the Babylo...

The house stood in the Rue Raynouard a short distance from the place where it rushes down a slope to join a half dozen other streets in a whirlpool known as the Place Passy surr...

And now Ellen, as she dressed to dine alone with the blind old woman belowstairs, wondered why Rebecca Schönberg had been at all interested in her. She had, it was true, faith i...

There was but one thing which diverted the stream of their gossip and this was the mention of the sacred name of Bonaparte. She gathered, after a time, that there was a Prince B...

It was her parting shot at the Town. She stood now, free of it forever, surrounded by her husband, her son Robert and the everlasting Gramp. There was money in her pocket, money...

By long established precedent, Sabine made no move toward approaching the newcomer. It was her habit to avoid involving herself with too many people; such a course made life far...

There was a moon which painted all the garden outside with a pale green light; the pastry-cake pavilion of Le Nôtre had turned to silver and the leaves of the old plane trees, r...

So they talked, rather stupidly, fencing with each other, making no progress. It was clear that Sabine had not called at such an hour simply through politeness, nor was it likel...

And she knew that she could not stop him. She knew that all the ink in the world and all the words she might write with it would not hold him back. It was all so clear in his le...

“People don’t change as much as that ... especially if they not seen each other. They are likely to keep a memory of that sort always fresh. It’s likely to grow strong instead o...

For a long time he lay thus, tormented by memories of what he had seen ... the crowd cheering and applauding, the woman in crimson and diamonds (an evil creature, symbol of all...

“You can’t go,” continued Rebecca, “not now. Think of it ... all the years of sacrifice and work, gone for nothing. Can’t you see that fate has delivered triumph into your hands...

But Marguerite would not stir. She grew arch and hung her head. She threatened to sob. Her mother coaxed and argued and pleaded but nothing happened. Marguerite would have none...

It gave Fergus the strangest shock. He found himself turning abruptly away and hiding in the stairway with an air of having witnessed something obscene. It was all spoiled now,...

It was true. There was a difference now, of a kind she had not thought of before. It was a difference which had to do with age and all the slow hardening which had come with eac...

She thought too of Callendar, for he was with her all the time, almost as if he had never gone away. The old foreboding returned to her--that phrase out of Lily’s letter--_And t...

But this Callendar. Who was he and why had she never spoken of him before? Surely she was a strange girl who kept such secrets so passionately hidden. Where had he come from? Wa...

The motor came abreast of them with Callendar--a stranger, a foreigner--at the wheel, driving with a cool recklessness. It was all weird and unreal, so preposterous that Hattie...

She took out the mirror from the side of her motor and fell to examining her face. Here at least the twelve years had not taken the toll that might have been expected. There was...

The mirrors put her nerves on edge. She loathed the reflections staring back at her from every wall. They were like faces peering in at her ... her own face repeated over and ov...

At the announcement Sabine turned sharply, with a queer look in her eyes. Years before in this very room, she had made the identical speech to Callendar, and he had turned and k...

Only Lily and old Gramp took the affair with calmness, the one gently with the air of knowing that in all the confusion some one must keep her head and smooth out all the little...

Afterward in the big reception room lined with the mirrors used by the dancers of the ballet before a performance, she waited to receive all those who came to welcome her back i...