The "Genius"

This story has its beginnings in the town of Alexandria, Illinois, between 1884 and 1889, at the time when the place had a population of somewhere near ten thousand. There was a...

Some of the incidents of this courtship that followed, ephemeral as it was, left a profound impression on Eugene's mind. They met to skate not long after, for the snow came and...

Eugene grew more and more moody and rather restless under Stella's increasing independence. She grew steadily more indifferent because of his moods. The fact that other boys wer...

The city of Chicago--who shall portray it! This vast ruck of life that had sprung suddenly into existence upon the dank marshes of a lake shore. Miles and miles of dreary little...

For the time being this encounter stirred to an almost unbridled degree Eugene's interest in women. Most men are secretly proud of their triumph with woman--their ability to tri...

Eugene collected and reported faithfully every day, and had managed to save a little money. Margaret was now a part of his past. His landlady, Mrs. Woodruff, had gone to live wi...

It was after he had decided to enter the art class that Eugene paid his first visit to his family. Though they were only a hundred miles away, he had never felt like going back,...

The rest of that evening Eugene spent not exactly with, but near Miss Blue--Miss Angela Blue, as he found her name to be. He was interested in her not so much from the point of...

The succeeding days in the art school after his first admission revealed many new things to Eugene. He understood now, or thought he did, why artists were different from the ran...

Ruby Kenny was the adopted child of an old Irish laborer and his wife who had taken her from a quarrelling couple when they had practically deserted her at the age of four years...

A little while before, Angela Blue at Eugene's earnest solicitation had paid her first Fall visit to Chicago. She had made a special effort to come, lured by a certain poignancy...

From drawing from the nude, which Eugene came to do very successfully that winter, his interest switched to his work in the illustration class where costume figures were used. H...

In two weeks Angela came back, ready to plight her faith; and Eugene was waiting, eager to receive it. He had planned to meet her under the smoky train shed of the Chicago, Milw...

Once this idea of New York was fixed in his mind as a necessary step in his career, it was no trouble for him to carry it out. He had already put aside sixty dollars in a saving...

Not knowing routes or directions in New York, Eugene took a Desbrosses Street ferry, and coming into West Street wandered along that curious thoroughfare staring at the dock ent...

The art world of New York is peculiar. It was then and for some time after, broken up into cliques with scarcely any unity. There was a world of sculptors, for instance, in whic...

This one significant sale with its subsequent check of seventy-five dollars and later the appearance of the picture in color, gave Eugene such a lift in spirit that he felt, for...

Toward noon old Jotham Blue came in from a cornfield where he had been turning the earth between the rows. Although sixty-five and with snowy hair and beard he looked to be vigo...

It would be hard to say in what respect, if any, the experiences of this particular night altered Eugene's opinion of Angela. He was inclined to like her better for what he woul...

Eugene carried home with him not only a curiously deepened feeling for Angela, due to their altered and more intimate relationship, but moreover a growing respect for her family...

But Miriam Finch's family, of which she seemed so independent, had not been without its influence on her. This family was of Middle West origin, and did not understand or sympat...

The chief trouble with his present situation, and with the entrance of these two women into his life, and it had begun to be a serious one to him, was that he was not making mon...

Towards the end of spring Eugene concluded he would rather go up in the mountains near Christina's bungalow this summer, than back to see Angela. The memory of that precious cre...

The days spent in the mountains were seventeen exactly, and during that time with Christina, Eugene reached a curious exaltation of spirit different from anything he had experie...

It is a rather dreary thing to come back into the hot city in the summer after a period of beauty in the mountains. The quiet of the hills was in Eugene's mind, the glisten and...

The beautiful June weather arrived and with it Eugene took his departure once more for Blackwood. He was in a peculiar mood, for while he was anxious to see Angela again it was...

The atmosphere of the house after this night seemed charged with reproach to Eugene, although it took on no semblance of reality in either look or word. When he awoke in the mor...

The studio of Messrs. Smite, MacHugh and Witla in Waverley Place was concerned the following October with a rather picturesque event. Even in the city the time when the leaves b...

The marriage ceremony between Eugene and Angela was solemnized at Buffalo on November second. As planned, Marietta was with them. They would go, the three of them, to the Falls,...

After the quiet of a small town, the monotony and simplicity of country life, the dreary, reiterated weariness of teaching a country school, this new world into which Angela was...

Whatever were Eugene's secret thoughts, he began his married life with the outward air of one who takes it seriously enough. Now that he was married, was actually bound by legal...

The result of Angela's outburst was that Eugene hastened to notify those whom he had not already informed--Shotmeyer, his father and mother, Sylvia, Myrtle, Hudson Dula--and rec...

The hope of fame--what hours of speculation, what pulses of enthusiasm, what fevers of effort, are based on that peculiarly subtle illusion! It is yet the lure, the ignis fatuus...

It was some little time before M. Charles condescended to write saying that if it was agreeable he would call Wednesday morning, January 16th, at 10 A. M., but the letter finall...

The exhibition which followed in April was one of those things which happen to fortunate souls--a complete flowering out before the eyes of the world of its feelings, emotions,...

Paris now loomed bright in Eugene's imagination, the prospect mingling with a thousand other delightful thoughts. Now that he had attained to the dignity of a public exhibition,...

The summer passed, and with it the freshness and novelty of Paris, though Eugene never really wearied of it. The peculiarities of a different national life, the variations betwe...

It was the beginning of a period destined to last five or six years, in which, to say the least, Eugene was not himself. He was not in any sense out of his mind, if power to rea...

It was in packing the trunks and leaving the studio in Washington Square (owing to the continued absence of Mr. Dexter they had never been compelled to vacate it) that Angela ca...

Spring, summer and fall came and went with Eugene and Angela first in Alexandria and then in Blackwood. In suffering this nervous breakdown and being compelled to leave New York...

If it had not been for the lurking hope of some fresh exciting experience with a woman, he would have been unconscionably lonely. As it was, this thought with him--quite as the...

The opportunity for further meetings seemed to come about quite naturally. The Witla boathouse, where the family kept one small boat, was at the foot of the Roth lawn, reached b...

The weakness of Eugene was that he was prone in each of these new conquests to see for the time being the sum and substance of bliss, to rise rapidly in the scale of uncontrolla...

Eugene was reaching the point where he had no more money and was compelled to think by what process he would continue to make a living in the future. Worry and a hypochondriacal...

From Biloxi, because of the approach of summer when it would be unbearably warm there, and because his funds were so low that it was necessary to make a decisive move of some ki...

The next thing was to see what could be done with the other art dealers and the paintings that were left. There were quite a number of them. If he could get any reasonable price...

This idea of appealing to the president of one of the great railroads that entered New York was not so difficult to execute. Eugene dressed himself very carefully the next morni...

The matter of securing admission to this house was quickly settled. The nephew, a genial, intelligent man of thirty-four, as Eugene discovered later, had no objection. It appear...

There were many days now, three months all told, in which Eugene obtained insight into the workaday world such as he had not previously had. It is true he had worked before in s...

It was while he was mooning along in this mood, working, dreaming, wishing, that there came, one day to her mother's house at Riverwood, Carlotta Wilson--Mrs. Norman Wilson, in...

The form of Carlotta Wilson was perfect, her passion eager, her subtlety a match for almost any situation. She had deliberately set out to win Eugene because he was attractive t...

Days like this could not go on forever. The seed of their destruction was in their beginning. Eugene was sad. He used to show his mood at times and if she asked him what was the...

The sequel of this scene was not to be waited for. At dinner time Mrs. Hibberdell announced in the presence of Carlotta and Davis that the house was going to be closed up for th...

The situation which here presented itself was subject to no such gracious and generous development. Angela was the soul of watchfulness, insistence on duty, consideration for ri...

Angela was quick to act upon her thought. No sooner had Eugene entered the bath than she gathered up the pieces, threw other bits of paper like them in their place and tried qui...

The hells of love are bitter and complete. There were days after that when she watched him, followed him down the pleasant lane from the house to the water's edge, slipping out...

Eugene's feelings on this occasion were of reasonable duration. It is always possible under such circumstances to take the victim of our brutalities in our arms and utter a few...

It was only after a considerable lapse of time, when trying to live on nine dollars a week and seeing Angela struggle almost hopelessly in her determination to live on what he e...

The work which Eugene undertook in connection with the art department of the _World_ was not different from that which he had done ten years before in Chicago. It seemed no less...

The Summerfield Advertising Agency, of which Mr. Daniel C. Summerfield was president, was one of those curious exfoliations or efflorescences of the personality of a single indi...

When Eugene called, Mr. Daniel C. Summerfield was in no great rush about any particular matter, but he had decided in this case as he had in many others that it was very importa...

The designs or suggestions which Eugene offered his prospective employer for the advertising of the products of M. Sand et Cie and the American Crystal Sugar Refining Company, w...

Still time went by, and although things did not improve very much in his office over the standards which he saw prevailing when he came there, he was obviously getting things mu...

There came a time, however, when all this excitement and wrath and quarreling began to unnerve Eugene and to make him feel that he could not indefinitely stand the strain. After...

The best positions are not always free from the most disturbing difficulties, for great responsibility goes with great opportunity; but Eugene went gaily to this new task, for h...

It was in the fall of the third year that the most flattering offer of any was made him, and that without any seeking on his part, for he was convinced that he had found a fairl...

The results of this evening were most pleasant, but in some ways disconcerting. It became perfectly plain that Colfax was anxious to have Eugene desert the Kalvin Company and co...

The upshot of Eugene's final speculation was that he accepted the offer of the United Magazines Corporation and left Mr. Kalvin. Colfax had written one day to his house asking h...

The opening days of this their second return to New York were a period of great joy to Angela. Unlike that first time when she was returning after seven months of loneliness and...

The affairs of the United Magazines Corporation, so far as the advertising, commercial and manufacturing ends at least were concerned, were not in such an unfortunate condition...

The trouble with this situation was that it involved more power, comfort, ease and luxury than Eugene had ever experienced before, and made him a sort of oriental potentate not...

It was in the course of his final upward progress that Eugene came once more into contact with Kenyon C. Winfield, Ex-State Senator of New York, President of the Long Island Rea...

Mrs. Dale was a strikingly beautiful and intelligent widow of thirty-eight, the daughter of a well-to-do and somewhat famous New York family of Dutch extraction--the widow of an...

While these various events were occurring the work of the United Magazines Corporation had proceeded apace. By the end of the first year after Eugene's arrival it had cleared up...

"I know something of that property," he said, studying a little outline map which Winfield had prepared. "I've been out there duck shooting with Colfax and some others. It's fin...

It had been while he was first perfecting his undertaking with Winfield as to what his relationship to the new Sea Island Construction Company was to be that Eugene had been dwe...

It was after this meeting that vague consciousness came to Suzanne that Mr. Witla, as she always thought of him to herself, was just a little more than very nice to her. He was...

This burst of emotion with its tentative understanding so subtly reached, changed radically and completely the whole complexion of life for Eugene. Once more now the spirit of y...

It would be impossible to describe even in so detailed an account as this the subtleties, vagaries, beauties and terrors of the emotions which seized upon him, and which by degr...

Having involved himself thus far, seized upon and made his own this perfect flower of life, Eugene had but one thought, and that was to retain it. Now, of a sudden, had fallen f...

There followed now a series of meetings contrived with difficulty, fraught with danger, destructive of his peace of mind, of his recently acquired sense of moral and commercial...

The introduction of this astonishing fact in connection with Angela was so unexpected, so morally diverting and peculiar that though Eugene denied it, half believed she was lyin...

This night passed without additional scenes, though as it stood it was the most astonishing and tremendous in all Eugene's experience. He had, not up to the time Angela walked i...

After dining joyously, these two returned to the city. Suzanne, as she neared New York proper, was nervous as to what Angela might have done, for she wanted, in case Angela told...

Eugene and Angela had been quarreling between themselves most bitterly; at other times Angela was attempting to appeal to his sense of justice and fair play, if not his old-time...

For hours that night, until one, two, and three o'clock in the morning; from five, six and seven on until noon and night of the next day, and the next day after that and the fou...

The fire and pathos of Mrs. Dale's appeal should have given Eugene pause. He thought once of going after her and making a further appeal, saying that he would try and get a divo...

Mrs. Dale's next step in this struggle was to tell Kinroy, who wanted, of course, in a fit of boyish chivalry, to go immediately and kill Eugene. This was prevented by Mrs. Dale...

It was a Montreal, Ottawa and Quebec express, and it ran without stopping to Albany. By the time it was nearing the latter place Suzanne was going to bed--and because it was a p...

The Cathcart Lodge, a long, two-story affair, half-way up a fine covered mountain slope, was one of those summer conveniences of the rich, situated just near enough to the prime...

It was three days later when he was at his office that a telegram came from Mrs. Dale, which read, "I depend on you, on the honor of a gentleman, to ignore any message which may...

The flaw in this situation was that Eugene, after getting Suzanne in his arms once more, had no particular solution to offer. Instead of at once outlining an open or secret sche...

The next day, after wavering whether they would not spend a few days here in billing and cooing and listening to Mrs. Dale's veiled pleas as to what the servants might think, or...

One would have thought that this terrific blow would have given Eugene pause in a way, and it did. It frightened him. Mrs. Dale had gone to Colfax in order to persuade him to us...

During the weeks which followed Colfax's talk with him, and Suzanne's decision, which amounted practically to a dismissal, Eugene tried to wind up his affairs at the United Maga...

To those who have followed a routine or system of living in this world--who have, by slow degrees and persistent effort, built up a series of habits, tastes, refinements, emotio...

Those who have ever tried to read that very peculiar and, to many, very significant document know what an apparent jumble of contradictions and metaphysical balderdash it appear...

The most dangerous thing to possess a man to the extent of dominating him is an idea. It can and does ride him to destruction. Eugene's idea of the perfection of eighteen was on...

It was while he was in this state, some two months later, that the great event, so far as Angela was concerned, came about, and in it, of necessity, he was compelled to take par...

The trouble with Angela's system, in addition to a weak heart, was that it was complicated at the time of her delivery by that peculiar manifestation of nervous distortion or co...

The dénouement of all this, as much as ever could be, was still two years off. By that time Suzanne was considerably more sobered, somewhat more intellectually cultivated, a lit...