The House of Helen

Sometime after midnight Helen stirred herself, much as if she was awaking early in the morning with a busy day before her. She stood up, stared about her in the shadowy room, mo...

She really had imported a maid, an ex-modiste of mature years, who would be of service to her in the choosing of her clothes and dressing herself properly. She could hear this w...

In 1913, Shannon had grown amazingly. The square was now a “plaza,” surrounded by handsome brick business houses. There were two or three factories on the outskirts of the town....

It was a day in June, in the year 1902. They are much the same everywhere, only in Georgia there is more June in such a day. Farther south the withering heat hints of July; fart...

There is a place called an Inn above a city in the mountains--it was built only a few years ago by a man with a Brobdingnagian imagination--a huge pile of bowlders, tunneled and...

There is an old copy of the Shannon _Sentinel_, dated October 17, 1902, which contains an account of the Adams-Cutter marriage. It lies folded in the trunk with Helen’s last gir...

One morning at the breakfast table Cutter looked at his wife appraisingly. They had been married eleven years. She was still pretty, but it was a beauty maturing into a sort of...

In April of 1917 this country joined the Allies in the Great War. The nation was transfigured with that spiritual and sacrificial emotion which invariably follows the sending of...

When she stepped from the car in front of Brim’s general merchandise store, it was as if she had stepped into a foreign land. The street, all things about her, were so familiar...

From this day George Cutter spent his spare time in and about the Adams cottage. You might have inferred that he was a homeless man. He accompanied Helen to such entertainments...

Three days after the homing birds flitting about the old foundry on the river road witnessed the betrothal of George and Helen, Mrs. George William Cutter was seen to issue from...

From this time their affair progressed with reeling swiftness. Helen assumed an air of independence, as if she had suddenly come into possession of a private fortune. This is ev...

When you are in love, everything is important and everything is secret. You become a consummate actor and liar in vain, because the whole world knows your secret almost as soon...

The next day George Cutter’s spirits had revived and with them a certain hope. He resolved to have it out with Helen. She was not reasonable. Few women were, but he knew that sh...

Sometimes when a man has been shot, he stands for the briefest moment before he falls. So Cutter stood, still facing the window, while the fatal shock passed through him. This w...

This was the beginning of that affair. Helen remembered the day well. A woman never forgets the sky and the weather of the day upon which love called her forth to the vicissitud...

The flamboyant display Helen made of her baby shocked Shannon and finally conquered the willful suspicions entertained by her neighbors. Her diffidence and reserve vanished. She...

The town of Shannon lay like a wreath flung wide upon the hills above one of those long, green, fertile valleys to be seen everywhere below the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Geo...

The ruins of an old iron foundry stood on this river road. The roof had fallen in long ago. The walls and gables, built of rough stone alone remained. Creeping vines covered the...

Beginning with the year 1921 many men, who had too swiftly acquired fortunes in the handling of government contracts, began to pass under the rod of investigations concerning su...

The little pale image of goodness so frequently seen sitting in Cutter’s car before the bank waiting for him around five o’clock in the afternoon was what remained of the origin...