The erratic flame

Anne's villa delighted Alexis, especially the small music room with its frescoed walls and paucity of furniture. It was, he said, the ideal room for music, and they spent their...

After a sleepless night, Anne dozed late. So when Regina brought in her coffee about nine o'clock as usual, she awakened gropingly to fog. Fog, which filtered in at the windows...

A shiver of excitement ran up Anne's spine. So they had arrived at last! "How large it looks," she said rather breathlessly. In spite of herself a slight tremor crept into her v...

Anne looked up into the Marchese's face with a quizzical smile. Beneath the staccato uproar of piano and laughter his voice flowed liquid and unbroken. Interesting and even thri...

Clear and still as one of those miniature landscapes enclosed in a crystal ball, Central Park shimmered all snow and sunshine. Goaded by torturing thoughts, Claire trudged stoic...

The city was muffled in fog. It brooded over Fifth Avenue, oozing rain like an enormous sponge. Beneath its clammy drip, dirty snow melted into unwholesome puddles, street lamps...

It was one of those crystal October days, when the air is crisp and clean, tempered by a kindly sun and Central Park is etched in russet and gold against a sky of opalescent clo...

Mac Dougal Alley on a black, starless night was quite Hogarthian, decided the Marchese, as he pressed Ellen's doorbell, the ultra-chic in slums! He encountered the fathomless bl...

For days the sun had shone brilliantly upon the mountainside, and the lodge had long since emerged from its heavy swathing of fog. No longer a boat floating through mystic seas,...

Anne stirred uneasily. One slim, bare arm emerged from beneath the satin coverlet and wavered towards her face. The depths of her exhausted sleep, suddenly violated, rippled and...

As the mountain mist, caressing and desultory, resolved into a steady downpour, Anne glimpsed just above her the outlines of a hut. Crouched behind sodden boughs, decrepit, rams...

"Confess it, Anne. You are bored unspeakably, is it not so?" exclaimed the Marchese, as he poured a few drops of Bacardi into a cup of tea, before handing it to Anne. "As for me...

On the hillside, Anne's garden was abloom. Hyacinths and lilies, daffodils, jonquils and pansies, bordered the graveled paths. Morning-glories crept along the rose-tinted walls....

What was she thinking of, behind those drooping lids? What inimical thought stirred beneath those silken coils which shone like burnished metal in the firelight? He sighed. Was...

The heavy glass door rang beneath the tap of impatient knuckles. Aroused abruptly from fitful unconsciousness into which she had drifted unawares, Anne sat up in bed and pressed...

The car had turned an abrupt corner and stopped before the house. Regina opened the door, a metamorphosed Regina clad in concert regalia, very respectable and solid. Upon her fa...

"I offer you freedom and you call me names!" The tiny mouth pursed with rage. "But wait a moment, I'm afraid you can't go now. They're back from the movies. Isn't that the eleva...

Carnegie Hall gaped before Anne's eyes, like the yawning jaws of some prehistoric monster. Knees quaking beneath her, she seated herself in the front of the box and motioned to...

Heart thudding against her ribs, Claire advanced into the room. Ever since she had received Alexis' letter asking her to come and see him she had lived for this moment alone. An...

Dr. Elliott walked over to the window and raised the sash. "There, that will do, Ito. Thank you. You may go now. Mrs. Petrovskey is coming to. If Mrs. Petrovskey, senior, should...

"And I know I should not inflict it upon you." His troubled brown eyes rested upon her. "But if you knew what a horror I have gone through this week! Never in all the years that...

With the death of her husband, freedom had descended upon Anne like a gift of the gods. A divine ointment, it penetrated her bruised spirit, allaying the stored-up bitterness of...

The conventional living room was rendered gay by masses of spring flowers. Padding from vase to vase, Mme. Petrovskey inhaled their fragrance with triumphant nostrils. A tribute...

Joy irradiating the small, wan features, Claire looked up into Alexis' face. At the pathetic bewilderment in her eyes, a spasm of contrition shot through him. He sat down beside...

"What does this mean? Have you left Claire after all?" Her widened eyes stared at Alexis coldly. So all his good resolutions had meant just nothing? The weakling strain would ou...

After Anne dropped Vittorio at his hotel blankness fell upon her; the limitless blankness of a solitary planet whirling in space. A loneliness devastating as the fear of death....

The holiday season parted the lovers temporarily. Alexis' Christmas gift, a carved emerald, about her neck, like a symbol of slavery, Anne went to Virginia to visit her aunt. Sh...

It was a six mile drive to the station. Cleaving to the lip of the precipice, the road wound into the cup of the valley, where toy-like houses gleamed white from out checkered f...

The delicate profile beside her, momentarily illuminated by a street lamp, acquired the translucent hardness of carved, white jade. "He has pneumonia." Once more in shadow, the...