The Man with the Double Heart

As he watched, the lights were lowered in the body of the hall and the beautiful overture began, stealing like a spirit of sun-lit shores across the artificially warm atmosphere...

The night was close and sultry. A sudden longing for air drove McTaggart into the deserted Park. His luggage was packed, and early next day he would start for the North and his...

But all the time he was keenly aware of the magnet that drew him to the South. Each careless, friendly letter of Jill's increased his desire to see her. In Scotland he had met C...

"If you please, miss"--the untidy maid stood in the doorway, aggressively--"the chicken 'asn't come yet and Cook sez it would be no good sending round, as the shop's shut."

"Come in and have some coffee," her eyes passed from McTaggart to the big gray car. "Doesn't it look jolly! I'm longing to go in it, but I'm rather bothered too--I'll tell you w...

A month passed quickly away. Almost every day McTaggart's car drew up at the house near Primrose Hill, and Jill and Roddy joyfully mounted in it, with an occasional fourth in th...

"It's a deuce of a mess!" So he summed it up. "What an unlucky beggar I am!--I thought it was pretty bad, but this"--he threw down the document--"is the limit!"

Before him stretched the broad, unbroken curve of the bay, a dazzling sheet of sapphire blue, save where the white "Molo," like a slender finger pointed from the basin of the do...

The sun was shining high in the heavens as McTaggart crossed the station yard to the Railway Inn of the little town that lay in the trough of the crumpled hills.

A month had flown by on the swift wings of Summer. Already a crispness in the air heralded in Dame Autumn; with her rainbow-hued cloak trailing golds and reds, glittering with t...

Although the band had been playing since the stroke of ten, guests were still arriving at the Cadells' door; in parties "personally conducted" by the hostess with whom they had...

Nothing could ruffle Cydonia's calm. The smile she had, unconsciously, prepared for the Bishop warmed McTaggart as he entered the room. Dazed him a little, truth to tell, she lo...

High above him an orange sun was swung in the misty heavens, putting to shame the wistful gleam of the pale lamps below, with their air of straggling revellers caught by the daw...

Inside the dining-room Roddy was leaning over the table, a sketch-block and paints before him. He looked up as his sister appeared with an anxious, inquiring glance that seemed...

The Restaurant "Au Bon Bourgeois" faced on a dingy Soho street, the newly painted white door flanked by myrtle-trees in tubs. The entrance was through a narrow passage which led...

"I think it _perfect_," said McTaggart, warmly. He glanced around him as he spoke at the awning, striped with green, the basket chairs, gay red cushions, and the coarse rush mat...

A shaft of sunshine from under the blind fell across his vast bed and he rubbed his eyes, sleepy, bewildered, wondering where on earth he could be? Then he remembered, felt for...

McTaggart's week-end visit prolonged itself. For on Monday the Bishop drove him over to lunch at Rustall, Lord Warleigh's fine old Tudor mansion near Oxton. Here he found again...

Ebenezer Cadell was one of those men--daily becoming more rare--who, after a life of strenuous work, can face, at breakfast, a mutton chop. In this nervous age the fact in itsel...

She settled herself back more firmly in her corner as the car swept them down a steep incline between high hedges bared of leaves, gathering impetus for the upward hill beyond....

"Roddy's out," said the girl, "he's gone to the theatre with a school friend. He didn't _want_ to, but I told him he must! He's awfully cut up about it all. But it's no good cry...

The fog, pouring down from Regent's Park above, was wedged tight in Harley Street like a wad of dirty wool, but in the open space fronting Harcourt House it found room to expand...

Birds sang as she glided by, anemones peered through the grass and in the olive trees young leaves danced in the sun like silver coins, tossed up by gay Mother Earth as ransom t...

On her knees beside her a stout dressmaker waited, in mute suspense, her mouth full of pins. Her attitude was that of profound admiration, but in her heart she quailed, foreseei...

Jill leaned over the steamer rail, watching the pier slowly recede, and, far away, a tiny figure against the sky, arm aloft. Then, as it grew to a black speck and blurred into t...

He saw that Jill was worn out with nursing and anxiety, that the long nights of vigil were bought at the expense of her nerves. He guessed, moreover, the strained resources of t...

Cydonia sat in the window seat, her face full of dreams, her white hands folded above her needlework. The smooth and slender fingers with their faintly pink nails, the small hea...

Once on board the boat he began a letter to Cydonia; but the passage was rough and he abandoned the attempt, returning to the deck to enjoy the sight of the great rollers slappi...

But as he neared the mist-wreathed cliffs of Dover McTaggart's patriotism was put to the test by the captious weather and the hopeless, sea-sick crowd around him. Rain and hail...

"Not a bit." Jill turned with a bright face from the window in the corridor where she stood, gazing out. "It's all so lovely. Look at that hill rising up like a fir cone, agains...

It was a gilded triple affair, each side panel swinging on a pivot so that the woman sitting there could study herself from all angles. Under the crude electric light, from whic...

McTaggart lay in bed, his eyes half-closed, watching the gray light spread from under the blind. His head ached and he felt unusually tired and heavy, bound down to his pillow b...

Signor Vanni, full of importance and inwardly delighted at the accident which had placed the hero of the hour in his hands, gathered up his portfolio and descended nimbly on to...