Bestsellers, American, 1895-1923

The Real Adventure

I A Point of Departure II Beginning an Adventure III Frederica's Plan and What Happened to It IV Rosalind Stanton Doesn't Disappear V The Second Encounter VI The Big Horse VII How It Struck Portia VIII Rodney's Experiment IX After Breakfast

Chapters

51. Chapter 51

Except for the vacuum where the core and heart of it all ought to have been, Rose's life in New York during the year that put her on the high road to success as a designer of co...

48. Chapter 48

Centropolis wasn't a very big town, but it had a wide, well paved street lined with stores, and a pleasant variety of gravel roads winding round hills that had neat and fairly p...

52. Chapter 52

The fact that the length of time it would take a taxi to bring him down from his hotel to her apartment was not enough to decide anything in, plan anything in, was no more than...

53. Chapter 53

There was a sense in which this prediction of Rodney's about their honeymoon was altogether true, They had great hours--hours of an emotional intensity greater than any they had...

49. Chapter 49

John Williamson's doctor packed him off to Carlsbad just about the time that Rose achieved the conquest of Centropolis (along in April, 1914, that was). Violet and their one chi...

50. Chapter 50

None of the speculative explanations Rodney's friends advanced for his having bought that precious solemn house of the McCreas, together with all its rarified esthetic furniture...

37. Chapter 37

There is a kaleidoscopic character about the events of the ten days or so preceding the opening performance of most musical comedies which would make a sober chronicle of them s...

40. Chapter 40

It was, after all, out of that limbo that Jimmy had spoken of as the margin of the unforeseeable, that the blind instrument of Fate appeared. He was a country lawyer from down-s...

44. Chapter 44

Analyzing what little Alec McEwen actually said, disregarding the tone of his voice and the look in his eye; disregarding, indeed, the meaning he attached to his own words, and...

31. Chapter 31

With her umbrella over her shoulder, Rose set sail northward again through the rain, absurdly cheered; first by the fact that the opening skirmish had distinctly, though intangi...

33. Chapter 33

The Girl Up-stairs had quite a miscellaneous lot of plot; indeed a plot fancier might have detected nearly all the famous strains in its lineage. Its foci were Sylvia Huntington...

30. Chapter 30

"Here's the first week's rent then," said Rose, handing the landlady three dollars, "and I think you'd better give me a receipt showing till when it's paid for. Do you know wher...

35. Chapter 35

"Why, this was what I wanted to say," said Rose, taking up the broken conversation as he pulled the shop door to behind him. She didn't go out on to the sidewalk, but lingered i...

19. Chapter 19

It argued no real lack of sisterly affection that Rose didn't want to see Portia that morning. Even if there had been no other reason, being found in bed at half past ten in the...

22. Chapter 22

The gown that Rodney had spoken of apologetically to the Lakes as a coronation robe, was put away; the maid was sent to bed. Rose, huddled into a big quilted bath-robe, and in s...

21. Chapter 21

He waited till he heard them go, then went out and disconnected his own desk telephone, which the office boy, on going home, always left plugged through; went back into his inne...

43. Chapter 43

Rodney's docility didn't go to the length of the dose of veronal Harriet had recommended, but it did assent to a program that occupied the greater part of the day, including a T...

36. Chapter 36

She couldn't of course have missed a thing as plain as that but for a complete preoccupation of thought and feeling that would have left her oblivious to almost anything that co...

18. Chapter 18

It was with a reminiscent smile that Rose sat down before her telephone the next morning and called a number from memory. Less than a year ago, it had been such a thrilling adve...

38. Chapter 38

He said, "I want a talk with you," and she, thinking he meant then and there, glanced about for a corner where they'd be tolerably secure against the charging rushes of grips, p...

17. Chapter 17

James Randolph was a native Chicagoan, but his father, an intelligent and prosperous physician, with a general practise in one of the northern suburbs, afterward annexed to the...

15. Chapter 15

But within a day or two, when a conversation overheard at a luncheon table recalled the architect to her mind, a rather perplexing question propounded itself to her. Why had it...

32. Chapter 32

Rose rehearsed twice a day for a solid week without forming the faintest conception of who "the girl" was or why she was "the girl up-stairs." She didn't know what sort of scene...

25. Chapter 25

She must wait for her miracle. As the weeks and months wore away, and as the season of violent and high-frequency alternations between summer and winter, which the Chicagoan cal...

42. Chapter 42

Two days later, at half past eight in the morning, he walked in on Frederica at breakfast with her two eldest children. He had been able to count on this because the Whitneys ha...

14. Chapter 14

When the society editor of "America's foremost newspaper," as in its trademark it proclaims itself to be, announced that the Rodney Aldriches had taken the Allison McCreas' hous...

10. Chapter 10

"It's too ridiculous," she said. "Since last night, when I got to thinking how I must have looked, wrestling with that conductor, I've been telling myself that if I ever saw you...

27. Chapter 27

She began getting her strength back very fast after the next two or three days, but this queer kink in her emotions didn't straighten out. She came to see that it was absurd--mo...

28. Chapter 28

The sudden flaw of passion that had troubled the waters of Rodney's soul, subsided, spent itself in mutterings, explanations, tending to become at last rather apologetic. He sai...

39. Chapter 39

If you were to accost the average layman, especially the layman who has, at one time or another, found his personal affairs, or those of his friends, casually illuminated by the...

34. Chapter 34

If there was a profession in the world which Rose had never either idly or seriously considered as a possible one for herself, that of a teacher was it. And yet, the first money...

45. Chapter 45

It was a beastly day. A gusty rain, whipping up from the south, by way of answer to the challenge of a heavy snowfall the day before, inflicted a combination of the rigors of wi...

23. Chapter 23

She would have to wait. Accepted, root and branch, as Rose was forced by her husband's attitude to accept it, a conclusion of that sort can be a wonderful anodyne. And so it pro...

11. Chapter 11

It was just a fortnight later that Rose told her mother she was going to marry Rodney Aldrich, thereby giving that lady a greater shock of surprise than, hitherto, she had exper...

46. Chapter 46

all. And when I found out I would be recognizable, it was too late to stop--or at least it seemed so. Besides, I thought you knew. I saw Jimmy Wallace out there the opening nigh...

47. Chapter 47

From Dubuque the company made a circuit northward into Wisconsin and Minnesota, swung around a loop and worked their way south again. Disaster stalked behind them all the way, c...

8. Chapter 8

Rodney found a pipe of his that he kept concealed on the premises, loaded and lighted it, sat down astride a spindling little chair that looked hardly up to his weight, settled...

7. Chapter 7

At twenty minutes after seven that evening, Frederica Whitney was about as nearly dressed as she usually was ten minutes before the hour at which she had invited guests to dinne...

29. Chapter 29

The struggle between them lasted a week--a ghastly week, during which, as far as the surface of things showed, their life flowed along in its accustomed channels. It was a littl...

5. Chapter 5

"Indeed," continued the professor, glancing demurely down at his notes, "if one were the editor of a column of--er advice to young girls, such as I believe is to be found, along...

6. Chapter 6

It was after five o'clock when, at the conclusion of the game and a cold shower, a rub and a somewhat casual resumption of her clothes, she emerged from the gymnasium. High time...

41. Chapter 41

The same grizzly dawn that looked in on Rose through the dim window of her room on Clark Street, saw Rodney letting himself in his own front door with a latch-key after hours of...

13. Chapter 13

For their honeymoon, Martin had loaned them his camp up in northern Wisconsin--uncut forest mostly, with a river and a lot of little lakes in it. There were still deer and bear...

9. Chapter 9

Portia Stanton was late for lunch; so, after stripping off her jacket and gloves, rolling up her veil and scowling at herself in an oblong mahogany-framed mirror in the hall, sh...

12. Chapter 12

The wedding was set for the first week in June. And the decision, instantly acquiesced in by everybody, was that it was to be as quiet--as strictly a family affair--as possible....

16. Chapter 16

However, it was one thing to decide that this was so, and quite another thing to dismiss the preposterous idea from her mind. There was still an hour before she need begin dress...

24. Chapter 24

So far as externals went, her life, that spring, was immensely simplified. The social demands on her, which had been so insistent all winter, stopped almost automatically. The o...

26. Chapter 26

Traveling bars flowing along parallel, black and white; the white ones incandescent;--and a small helpless harried thing struggling to keep in the shadow of the black ones, or t...

20. Chapter 20

Through the two weeks that intervened before Portia and her mother left for the West, Rose disregarded the physical wretchedness--which went on getting worse instead of better--...

3. Chapter 3

I The Length of a Thousand Yards II The Evening and the Morning Were the First Day III Rose Keeps the Path IV The Girl With the Bad Voice V Mrs. Goldsmith's Taste VI A Business...

2. Chapter 2

I The Princess Cinderella II The First Question and an Answer to It III Where Did Rose Come In IV Long Circuits and Short V Rodney Smiled VI The Damascus Road VII How the Patter...

1. Chapter 1

I A Point of Departure II Beginning an Adventure III Frederica's Plan and What Happened to It IV Rosalind Stanton Doesn't Disappear V The Second Encounter VI The Big Horse VII H...

4. Chapter 4