The Maids of Paradise

The side door was partly open; I stepped in noiselessly and found myself in a small, dusky closet, partitioned from the telegraph office. Immediately the rapid clicking of the M...

"Honest inhabitants will not be disturbed. Citizens are invited to return to their homes and peacefully continue their legitimate avocations, subject to and under the guarantee...

"Now see here, governor," said Speed, "let's all have a drink first. He ma belle!"--to the big Breton girl knitting in the corner--"four little swallows of eau-de-vie, if you pl...

For a space she stood there, struck speechless; then, "Call him!" she cried. "Call him, I tell you! Bring him here--I want him here--here before us both!" She sprang to the door...

In their misfortune, the lonely women of Paradise recognized in this influx a godsend--a few francs to gain with which to face those coming wintry months while their men were ab...

When I could catch my breath again I realized that there was no time to waste. Speed looked at me angrily, but I jerked open the grating, flung another chair into the cage, leap...

She said, thoughtfully: "There is nothing joyless in my creed--above all, nothing stern. If it be fanaticism to desire for all the world that liberty of thought and speech and d...

"Uhlans! Mount!" came the steady voice of the Rittmeister; the carriage started. Almost at the word the darkness turned to flame; against the raging furnace of a house on fire I...

What irony lurks in blind chance that I should owe this woman my life--this woman whose home I had come to confiscate, whose friends I had arrested, who herself was now my priso...

And what a hunting-ground was that heart for men like Buckhurst! I could begin to read that mouse-colored gentleman now, to follow, after a fashion, the intricate policy which h...

Eyre suggested that we arm our circus people, and Speed promised to attend to it and to post them at the tent doors, ready to resist any interference with the performance on the...

The Lizard continued to turn the needle backward and forward around the face of the dial. Once, when he twirled it impatiently, a tiny chime rang out from within the box, but th...

Then the flying locomotive, far ahead, shrieked, and the train leaped, rushing forward into the unknown. Blackness, stupefying blackness, outside; inside, unseen, the huddled pa...

One thing I noticed as I crossed the unused moat on a permanent bridge: the youthful Countess no longer denied herself the services of servants, for I saw a cloaked shepherd and...

"Then somebody--Mornac probably--let loose a swarm of those shadowy lies called rumors--you know how that is done!--and people began to mutter, and the cafes began to talk of tr...

The pulsing moments passed and she did not answer, and I bit my lip and waited. At last she said, coolly: "A man must appraise himself. If he chooses, he is valuable. But values...

Instantly absolute secrecy was ordered, which I, for one, believed to be a great mistake. Yet the Emperor desired it, doubtless for the same reasons which always led him to supp...

"Others stick twigs of aubepine in their pastures; the apothecary is a man of science, yet every year he makes a bonfire of dried gorse and drives his cattle through the smoke....

"I offered to educate her, to send her to school, to work for her," he said. "She only looked at me out of those sea-blue eyes--you know how the little witch can look you throug...

Speed took them. I followed him, creeping back to the window, where we entered in time to avoid discovery by a wretch who had succeeded in mounting the wall, torch in hand.

I said nothing; he knew, of course, the exact state of the wound I had received, that the superficial injury was of no account, that the shock had left me sound as a silver fran...

Something in the hollow monotone of the sea made me think again of the low grumble of restless lions. The sound was hateful. Why should it steal in here--why haunt me even in th...

Under the window strident Prussian bugles were blowing a harsh summons; the young officer stepped to the loop-hole and looked out, then hastily removed his helmet and thrust his...

The saffron light in the room was turning pink when Jacqueline reappeared on the threshold in her ragged skirt and stained velvet bodice half laced, with the broken points hangi...

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"As for my name," I said, "you know that is not the name I bear; yet, knowing that, you have given me your love. You read my dossier in Paris; you know _why_ I am alone, without...