The Grain of Dust: A Novel

Into the offices of Lockyer, Sanders, Benchley, Lockyer & Norman, corporation lawyers, there drifted on a December afternoon a girl in search of work at stenography and typewrit...

"No, thank you," said he. And he looked up--to find himself gazing at still another person, wholly different from any he had seen before. The others had all been women--womanly...

No, Norman's mood, as he watched the miserable crowds afoot and reflected upon them, was neither remorseful nor triumphant. He simply noted an interesting fact--a commonplace fa...

"I've done nothing _you_ wouldn't approve of--or find excuses for. But that's because you--I--all of us in this class--and in most other classes--have been trained to false idea...

When the door closed behind her he rose and paced about the room uneasily. He was filled with disquiet, with hazy apprehension. His nerves were unsteady, as if he were going thr...

She seated herself in the usual place, at the opposite side of the broad table. With pencil poised she fixed her gaze upon the unmarred page of her open notebook. Instead of aba...

Tetlow was gone. The machine tapped monotonously on. The barette which held the girl's hair at the back was so high that the full beauty of the nape of her neck was revealed. Th...

Norman had ceased to listen. The girl was moving toward the door by which they had entered--was in the doorway--was gone! He stood in an attitude of attention; Hallowell talked...

He yielded. While she gazed round with the air of a visitor to a Zoo that is affected by fashionable people, and commented on the faces, figures, and clothes of the women, he st...

"She didn't say. But a woman can tell what a man has in the back of his head--when it concerns her. And she is a good woman--so innocent that you ought to be ashamed of yourself...

Counting all she spent and arranged to spend in those first few weeks, you had no great total. But it was great for a girl who had been making ten dollars a week. Also there wer...

He flung her hand into her lap. "You are making a fool of me. And I don't wonder. I've invited it. Surely, never since man was created has there been such another ass as I." He...

Never had she respected him so profoundly. For the first time she had measured strength with him and had been beaten and routed. She fancied herself enormously proud; for she la...

She drew herself away from him, stood before him like snow, like ice. "One thing I have never told you. I'll tell you now," she said deliberately. "I despise you."

So, Josephine sailed away to Europe, with the consolation that her father was so chagrined by the fizzle that he had withdrawn his veto upon the purchase of a foreign title--tha...

"Isn't there anything I can do, Dorothy, to make you forget and forgive?" he cried, like a boy, an infatuated boy. "For God's sake, Tetlow, help me! Tell her I'm not so rotten a...

Norman, dressed with more than ordinary care--how sensitive a man becomes about those things when there is neither rustle nor jingle in his pockets, and his smallest check would...

When he left the house he saw standing on the curb before it a tall, good-looking young man--with a frank amiable face. He hesitated, glowering at the young man's profile. Then...

He looked at her in silence. She could have said nothing that would have caused a livelier response within himself. His cynicism noted the fact that while he had mercifully conc...

As he called out this order, a grunt of satisfaction ran round the row of human derelicts. Tetlow shuddered, yet was moved and thrilled, too, as he glanced from face to face--th...

"For you to finish with me as father confessor, to begin with me as lawyer. Pray don't hurry. My time is yours." This with a fine air of utmost suavity and respect.

He made a good-humoredly satirical little bow. "I think you are charming," said he. "It would be a waste of time to look at or to think of anyone else when oneself is the most c...

It was impossible for him to appreciate the effect of his personality upon others--how, without his trying or even wishing, it made them dread a purely imaginary displeasure and...

To find out he resorted to various elaborate round about methods that did credit to the ingenuity of his mind. But he made at every cunning cast a barren water-haul. Either she...