The Return

He was utterly wearied, but he walked on for a long while with a dogged unglancing pertinacity and without looking behind him. Then he rested under the dew-sodden hedgeside and...

It was but little after daybreak when Mrs Lawford, after listening at his door a while, turned the key and looked in on her husband. Blue-grey light from between the venetian bl...

Lawford sat on in the darkness, and now one sentence and now another of their talk would repeat itself in his memory, in much the same way as one listlessly turns over an antiqu...

Sheila, calm, alert, reserved, was sitting at the open window when he awoke again. His breakfast tray stood on a little table beside the bed. He raised himself on his elbow and...

There was no one in the room, and no light, when they entered. For a moment Grisel stood by the open window, looking out. Then she turned impulsively. ‘My brother, of course, wi...

It was a quiet supper the three friends sat down to. Herbert sat narrowing his eyes over his thoughts, which, when the fancy took him, he scattered out upon the others’ silence....

There were three books in the room—Jeremy Taylor’s ‘Holy Living and Dying,’ a volume of the Quiver, and a little gilded book on wildflowers. He read in vain. He lay and listened...

Raying and gleaming in the sunlight the hired landau drove up to the gate. Lawford, peeping between the blinds, looked down on the coachman, with reins hanging loosely from his...

Lawford slept far into the cloudy Monday morning, to wake steeped in sleep, lethargic, and fretfully haunted by inconclusive remembrances of the night before. When Sheila, with...

But the coolness and deliberation of his scrutiny, had to a certain extent calmed Lawford’s mind and given him confidence. Hitherto he had met the little difficulties of life on...

A quiet knocking aroused him in the long, tranquil bedroom; and Herbert’s head was poked into the room. ‘There’s a bath behind that door over there,’ he whispered, ‘or if you li...

The churchyard in which Arthur Lawford found himself wandering that mild and golden September afternoon was old, green, and refreshingly still. The silence in which it lay seeme...

The first faint streaks of dawn were silvering across the stars when Lawford again let himself into his deserted house. He stumbled down to the pantry and cut himself a crust of...

Herbert himself went down to order the governess cart, and packed them in with a rug. And in the dusk Grisel set Lawford down at the corner of his road and drove on to an old bo...

Her husband turned wearily once more, and drawing up a chair sat down in front of the cold grate. He realised that Sheila thought him as much of a fool now as she had for the mo...

She came out into the sunlight, and they went through the little gate together. She walked quickly, without speaking, over the bridge, past a little cottage whose hollyhocks lea...

‘What’s in a name?’ laughed Herbert. ‘But it really is a queer show-up of human oddity. A fellow comes in here, searching; that’s all.’ His back was turned, as he stood staring...

Mr Bethany sat awaiting them in the dining-room, a large, heavily-furnished room with a great benign looking-glass on the mantelpiece, a marble clock, and with rich old damask c...

Lawford listened awhile before opening his door. He heard voices in the dining-room. A light shone faintly between the blinds of his bedroom. He very gently let himself in, and...

‘My sister always forgets everything,’ said Herbert, turning to Lawford; ‘even tea-time. This is Mr Lawford, Grisel. We’ve been arguing no end. And we want you to give a decisio...

The last light of sunset lay in the west; and a sullen wrack of cloud was mounting into the windless sky when Lawford entered the country graveyard again by its dark weather-wor...

The Sabbath, pale with September sunshine, and monotonous with chiming bells, had passed languidly away. Dr Simon had come and gone, optimistic and urbane, yet with a faint inwa...

manage to set the fellow on his feet. Even there he does absolutely take one’s imagination. I shall never forget the thrill of picking him up in the Charing Cross Road. You see,...

One solitary and tall candle burned on the great dressing-table. Faint, solitary pictures broke the blankness of each wall. The carpet was rich, the bed impressive, and the basi...