The Quest: A Romance

I Ste. Marie Hears of a Mystery and Meets a Dark Lady II The Ladder to the Stars III Ste. Marie makes a Vow, but a Pair of Eyes haunt Him IV Old David Stewart V Ste. Marie sets...

"Sacred thousand devils! Fool that I am! Dolt! Why didn't I think of it before?" Hartley stared at him and Ste. Marie stared down the Champs Elysees like one in a trance.

"I fancy--from your description I fancy I know who the man was. If it is the man I am thinking of, the name is--Powers. He is, as you have said, a rather shady character, and I...

"I have forgotten what it is," said he. "I expect I must be very old. I have forgotten what love--that sort of love--is like. It seems very far away to me and rather unimportant...

"Oh, my friend," she said, "be wise! Give this up in time. It is a beautiful thought and I love you for it, but it is madness--yes, yes, a sweet madness, but mad nevertheless! W...

"I come with congratulations. My niece has told me all about it. Lucky young man! Ah!----" He reached the door of the inner room and saw Richard Hartley standing by the window,...

"Oh, I'll do that," said the other man. "I'll explain it to her, if any explanation's necessary. I think you'll find that she will laugh at it." But Ste. Marie shook his head.

"That was very like Ste. Marie," he said. "Ste. Marie is a very exceptional young man. He can be an angel one moment, a child playing with toys the next, and--well, a rather com...

Through the pale blue wreathing smoke of his cigarette Captain Stewart gazed down the room to where Eternal Buddha stood and smiled eternally. And from there the man's eyes move...

He found himself in a square dimly lighted room, much smaller than the other. There was a round table in the centre so he thought it must be Stewart's dining-room. At the left a...

"I have to go across the river to the _Bristol_ to see some relatives who are turning up there to-day, and who will probably keep me until evening, and then I shall have to go b...

A bugle sounded and a drum beat from the great fosse under the wall, and a company of _piou-pious_, red capped, red trousered, shambled through their evolutions in a manner to b...

A shaft of golden light from the low sun slanted into the place through the western window, from which the Venetians had been pulled back, and fell across the face of the man, w...

Ste. Marie opened his eyes with none of the dazed bewilderment that he might have expected. The events of the preceding day came back to him instantly and without shock. He put...

"Forgive me for sitting down!" he said, "and sit down yourself, I beg! I'm still very shaky from my attack of illness. Ste. Marie? Ste. Marie has disappeared? How very extraordi...

He became aware, after a long time, of voices below, and turned upon his elbows to look. The ivy had clambered upon and partly covered the iron grille of the little balcony and...

The mistake was not as absurd as it may seem, for it is a fact that the voice which is called a contralto, if it is a good and clear and fairly resonant voice, sounds at a dista...

The man standing by the window forced himself quite deliberately to look the plain facts in the face. He compelled himself to envisage this beautiful girl with her tragic eyes f...

"Take him away!" cried Captain Stewart in a sudden loud voice, and the old Michel touched his charge upon the shoulder. So Ste. Marie went without further words. From a little d...

O'Hara's hard face twitched suddenly, as if in anger, and he gave an exclamation under his breath, so the younger man inferred that "old Charlie" had not spoken of their encount...

"Either he must be told," said the man, "or he must be taken back to his home by force." He told her about the four letters which in four days he had thrown over the wall into t...

"Even so, I am glad that at last we know each other--for what we are.... I should have been sorry to go on thinking you ... what I thought before.... And I could not have borne...

The old woman returned with a jug of water, towels and the bottle of aromatic salts. The two of them washed that red stain from Ste. Marie's head and found that he had received...

"Ah," she cried, "don't misunderstand me! Don't think that I'm brutal or ungrateful for all you've--you've suffered in trying to help us. Don't think that! I can--we can never b...

The action of this novel once again takes place in Canada--a country he has made especially his own--and in this story is a plot of quite unusual power and interest.