The best British short stories of 1922

Miss Crewe, however, found one hundred and fifty pounds no longer what it had been. Prices were rising in every direction. She wrote to Edward pointing this out, and asking him...

The hall, too, showed a light, and, looking up the street, she saw a maidservant, running very fast, disappear round the corner. After that there was silence for a long time. In...

"Indeed, there are few men who are not willing to go to the devil if the consideration be large enough. A woman, on the other hand, is too often the victim of her emotions. She...

The old lady and gentleman arose in outraged dignity and started to leave the room, when a diversion was caused by the entrance of a pleasant-faced lady in hat and cloak. I had...

Just over the bridge she stopped to speak with another girl who worked in his own counting-house. As Ben hurried up to pass them before they separated, really see her, this othe...

Sir William nearly screamed. "Be quiet, girl. Fosdike," he snarled, turning viciously on his secretary, "what the deuce do you mean by pretending to keep an eye on local affairs...

"Well, but they don't count. I wasn't in love with Lawson. It was his career. If he hadn't been a Cabinet Minister; if he hadn't been so desperately gone on me; if he hadn't sai...

She would be in her bedroom, sitting before the mirror in her diaphanous underwear, touching up her face. The pauses in the song made him see her.... Now she was using the eyebr...

"Look here, Seaton," I said once more, wriggling to my feet. "You may think I'm a jolly noodle; just as you please. But your aunt has been civil to me and all that, and I don't...

The old woman rose and began to lay the supper, silently and deftly, moving from cupboard to table without looking up. Mary sat by the fire, motionless and speechless, her eyes...

The end left her almost as much exhausted as Ben himself. The sweat was running down his face as he got up from his seat, came forward to the front of the platform, and bowed ri...

One side of the room was built of obscured glass panes, with an open square in the middle and a ledge upon which rested several suggestive empty glasses, so I crossed to this ho...

He simply felt apparently that she had been badly treated (the very last thing that she had been), gave her any money he had, put his rooms at the disposal of herself and her fr...

There should have been another man to take two corners, but all hands were wanted; so the labourer had to run all day. It was hot, no wind, no shade. If he looked up for a momen...

And, in all that time, Adrian had not once been to the house in Tavistock Square. Rachel had kept him away by what she felt had become all too transparent excuses. That terror,...

"I shall keep it," he swore, "as long as these arms have life in them," and he seized her just as she was crouching to escape, and covered her with kisses.

When he went, when he had to go, he took with him the memory of her that had become crystallised, set for him in his own frequent words to her, standing at her side, looking dow...

Unquestionably she believed it, Rachel decided. This was no pose, but a horrible piece of self-deception. This raddled, repulsive creature had actually persuaded herself into th...

In their contemplation of their victim they were so absorbed that they apparently forgot entirely the three of us bedded on the other side of the hanging sail. Mick and I were s...

For you see, Ethel flourishes. In passion, you know, nothing succeeds like success; and her affair with Norman Hippisley advertised her, so that very soon it ranked as the first...

In the company of Adela he tried to forget the little contretemps. The whole thing was so absurd--so utterly undignified. As though _he_ didn't know! It was the little accumulat...

Slowly he got up and went out; that is to say, he very precisely selected the hat, gloves, coat, and silk muffler suitable to wear, and as precisely put them on. Then he blew up...

Seaton blew out three of the candles and, leaving the vacant room in semi-darkness, we groped our way along the corridor to the drawing-room. There a full moon stood shining in...

As a matter of course, on our arrival at the blest house in Church Street, we one and all respectfully greeted her, passed, to put it vulgarly, the time of day with her. But the...

To the Editor of _The Saturday Evening Post_, the Editor of _The Dial_, the Editor of _The Freeman_, the Editor of _The English Review_, the Editor of _The Century Magazine_, th...

In the public bar of the Wagtail, in Wapping, four men and a woman were drinking beer and discussing diseases. It was not a pretty subject, and the company was certainly not a h...

CAINE, WILLIAM. Boker's Stocking. Tatler. April 26. (144.) Carols. Pears' A. Dec. 25. '21. (29.) Corner in Worms. Str. Feb. (63:181.) Extravaganza. West. Jan. 7. (10.) Fanny's F...

His account becomes clearer again when he found himself a little before dawn in the park and in the company of a woman and a broken down pugilist. I saw both these persons after...