The Powers and Maxine

It is rather a startling sensation for a man to be caught suddenly by the nape of the neck, so to speak, and pitched out of heaven down to--the other place.

All that I had gained seemed worthless. Those quiet, sneering words of his almost crushed me. On the load I had struggled to bear without falling they laid one feather too much.

They were gone. They had closed the door behind them. I looked at Maxine, but she did not speak. With her finger to her lips she got up, trembling still; and walking to the door...

Some people apparently understand how to be unhappy gracefully, as if it were a kind of fine art. I don't. It seems too bad to be true that I should be unhappy, and as if I must...

When the play was over, I let Raoul drive home with me to supper. If Godensky knew, as he may have known--since he seemed to know all my movements--perhaps he thought that I was...

We looked everywhere, in all possible places, for the diamond necklace, Raoul and I; and to him, poor fellow, its second loss seemed overwhelming. He did not see in glaring scar...

It seemed as if the night would never end. If I had been vain, and deserved to be punished for my vanity, then I was well punished now; I felt so ashamed and humiliated.

It had come at last, the moment I had been thinking about for days. I was going to have him all to myself, the only person in the world I ever loved.

Maxine had taken the diamonds, but she had slipped the necklace into the bosom of her dress, pressing it down through the rather low-cut opening at the throat, and had therefore...

"What could that mean?" I wondered. I had supposed the two men had come in alone, but there must have been a third person. Who could it be? Had Lord Mountstuart been arranging a...

Never had I been caught in a situation which I liked less than finding myself, long after midnight, locked by Maxine de Renzie into her boudoir, while within hearing she did her...

If I had not been tingling with anger against Lisa, who had seemed to enjoy saying needlessly cruel things to me, perhaps I would have been utterly discouraged when she pricked...

When I went onto the stage to take up my cue, soon after the beginning of the first act, my brain was a blank. I could not remember a single line that I had to say. I couldn't e...

"As much as that? I should have thought less. We had to greet each other, after having been parted for many months; and still, in the three minutes, you believe that we had time...

Godensky was obliged to take his leave, which he did abruptly, but to all appearance with a good grace; and when he was gone Marianne ushered in a girl--a tall, beautiful girl i...

When Raoul was gone I made Marianne hurry me out of the cloth-of-gold and filmy tissue in which the unfortunate Princess Hélène had died, and into the black gown in which the al...

I tried to answer the question, to decide something; but my brain felt dead. "I can't think now. I must trust to luck--trust to luck," I said to myself, desperately, as Marianne...

There was a strong smell of paraffin oil in the room; and from somewhere at the far end came a faint tap, tapping sound, which might be the light knocking of a window-blind or t...

When Ivor was safely out of the room, my first thought was to escape from behind the lounge, and get upstairs to my own quarters. But just as I had sat up, very cramped and wret...