The Common Law

There was a long, brisk, decisive ring at the door. He continued working. After an interval the bell rang again, briefly, as though the light touch on the electric button had lo...

Spring came unusually early that year. By the first of the month a few willows and thorn bushes in the Park had turned green; then, in a single day, the entire Park became lovel...

"Rita. She's in a volatile humour, too--fidgets; denies fidgeting; reproaches me for making her keep quiet; says I draw like a bum chimney--no wonder my work's rotten! Besides,...

In that month of June, for the first time in his deliberately active career, Neville experienced a disinclination to paint. And when he realised that it was disinclination, it a...

Toward the last of June Neville left town to spend a month with his father and mother at their summer Lome near Portsmouth. Valerie had already gone to the mountains with Rita T...

Neville had begun to see less and less of Valerie West. When she first returned from the country in September she had come to the studio and had given him three or four mornings...

An electric lamp was burning in the hallway; he threw open the connecting doors of the studio where a light gleamed high on the ceiling, and stood aside for her to pass him.

She began by balancing her check book, comparing stubs with cancelled checks, adding and verifying sums total, filing away paid bills and paying the remainder--a financial opera...

Archie Allaire, who hated him, discussing him floridly once with Querida at the Thumb-tack Club in the presence of a dozen others, characterised him as "one of those passively s...

It was slowly becoming evident to Neville that Valerie's was the stronger character--not through any genius for tenacity nor on account of any domineering instinct--but because,...

Neville attained his twenty-eighth year in March. Years still lay before him, a few lay behind him; but in a single month he had waded so swiftly forward through the sea of life...

Mrs. Hind-Willet, born to the purple--or rather entitled to a narrow border of discreet mauve on all occasions of ceremony in Manhattan, was a dreamer of dreams. One of her drea...

He never doubted that, when at length the time came for the great change--though perhaps not until the last moment--Valerie would consent to marry him. Because, so far in his li...

In the first place she had become excellent friends with the farmer and had persuaded him to delegate to her a number of his duties. She had to collect the newly laid eggs, hunt...

It was barely daylight when Valerie awoke. She lay perfectly still, listening, remembering, her eyes wandering over the dim, unfamiliar room. Through thin silk curtains a little...

"José Querida's death has had a curious effect on me. I was inclined to care very sincerely for him; I comprehended him better than many people, I think. Yet there was much in h...

Whether or not he had permitted himself to expect any, the suspense had been none the less almost unendurable. He walked the floor of the studio all day long, scarcely knowing w...

From her fastness at Estwich she defied him in letters, but every letter of hers seemed to leave some loophole open for further argument, and Ogilvy replied valiantly from a per...