The Lure of the Mask

Winter fogs in New York are never quite so intolerable as their counterparts in London; and while their frequency is a matter of complaint, their duration is seldom of any lengt...

Having yawned luxuriously, Merrihew sighed with perfect content. The pretty woman sitting opposite smiled at him tenderly, and he smiled back, abstractedly, as a man sometimes w...

"I am thirty-three years old," Hillard mused, as he sought the reading-room. "Down-town I am looked upon as a man of affairs, a business man, with the care of half a dozen fortu...

Out of the unromantic night, out of the somber blurring January fog, came a voice lifted in song, a soprano, rich, full and round, young, yet matured, sweet and mysterious as a...

A week in Sorrento, during which Merrihew saw all the beautiful villas, took tea with the Russian princess, made a martyr of himself trying to acquire a taste for the sour astri...

On the way up to Rome Hillard and his pupil had a second-class compartment all to themselves. The train was a fast one; for the day of slow travel has passed in Italy and the cr...

In a bedroom in one of the cheap little _pensiones_ which shoulder one another along the Riva degli Schiavoni, from the ducal palace to the public gardens, sat three men. All th...

The fascination of Monte Carlo is not to be described; it must be seen. Vice shall be attractive, says the Mother of Satan. At Monte Carlo it is more than attractive; it is comp...

Silence invested the Villa Ariadne; yet warm and mellow light illumined many a window or marked short pathways on the blackness of the lawn. Of the hundred lanterns hanging in t...

Hillard made an inexcusably careless shot. It was under his hand to have turned an even forty on his string. He grounded his cue and stood back from the table. That was the way...

The great ship had passed the Isle of Ischia, and now the Bay of Naples unfolded all its variant beauties. Hillard had seen them many times before, yet they are a joy eternal, a...

In the Villa Ariadne the wonderful fountain by Donatello was encircled by a deep basin in which many generations of goldfish swam about. Only the old gardener knew the secret of...

He sat there, waiting and listening. From the light and airy butterfly, the music changed to Farwell's _Norwegian Song_. Hillard saw the lonely sea, the lonely twilight, the lon...

From her window Kitty looked down on the Campo which lay patched with black shadows and moonshine. A magic luster, effective as hoar-frost, enveloped the ancient church, and the...

"What's the matter, Jack? Whenever you smoke, your cigar goes out; you read a newspaper by staring over the top of it; you bump into people on the streets, when there is plenty...

The morning sun poured over the hills, throwing huge shadows in the gorge below. The stream, swollen by the heavy rains of the past night, foamed and snarled along its ragged be...

Hillard passed the card to Merrihew, who presented it to Kitty. Smith had already seen it. He waved it aside moodily. La Signorina's eyes roved, as in an effort to find some way...

It was May in the Tuscany Hills; blue distances; a rolling horizon; a sky rimmed like a broken cup; a shallow, winding river, gleaming fitfully in the sun; a compact city in a v...

"It will be a waste of time. Bettina will have warned them. What's the Italian coming to, anyhow? She refused a hundred francs. But I can see that Mrs. Sandford had a hand in th...

In a fashionable quarter of the city there stood a brownstone house, with grotesque turrets, winding steps, and glaring polished red tiles. There was a touch of the Gothic, of t...

Shall I say that I am sorry? No. I am not a hypocrite. Death in all forms is horrible, and I shudder and regret, but I am not sorry. Does it sound cruel and heartless to express...

Masked! Only her mouth and chin were visible, and several little pieces of court-plaster effectually disguised these. There _was_ a mystery. He to come blindfolded and she to we...

It is in early morning that one should discover the Piazza San Marco. Few travelers, always excepting the Teutonic pilgrims, are up and about; and there is room for one's elbows...

The Riviera, from San Remo on the Italian side to Cannes on the French, possesses a singular beauty. Cities and villages nestle in bays or crown frowning promontories; and shelt...

"It is a matter of seven years," answered the spokesman. "Your servant attempted to kill an officer in Rome. Luigi here, who was then interested in the case in Rome, thought he...

The narrowness of the imagination of the old masters is generally depicted in their canvases. Heaven to them was a serious business of pearly gates, harps, halos, and aerial fli...

It was Merrihew who woke the sleeping cabby, pushed Hillard into a seat, and gave the final orders which were to take them out of the Villa Ariadne for ever. He was genuinely mo...