The Road to Understanding

If Burke Denby had not been given all the frosted cakes and toy shotguns he wanted at the age of ten, it might not have been so difficult to convince him at the age of twenty th...

For two reasons John Denby had failed to see what was taking place in his own home. First, because it would never have occurred to him that his son could fall in love with a nur...

With characteristic inclination to avoid anything unpleasant, the young husband had neglected to tell his wife that they were not to live in the Denby Mansion. He had argued wit...

It is so much easier to say than to do. But nothing in the experience of either Burke Denby or of Helen, his wife, had demonstrated this fact for them. Quite unprepared, therefo...

Helen Denby had never doubted her ability to be a perfect wife. As a girl, her vision had pictured a beauteous creature moving through a glorified world of love and admiration,...

Burke Denby had never given any thought as to whether he were going to be a perfect husband or not. He had wanted to marry Helen, and he had married her. That was all there was...

Mrs. Burke Denby was a little surprised at the number of letters directed to her husband in the morning mail that first day of November, until she noticed the familiar names in...

Of course the inevitable happened. However near two roads may be at the start, if they diverge ever so slightly and keep straight ahead, there is bound to be in time all the wor...

Burke Denby did not attempt to deceive himself after that Sunday dinner. His marriage had been a mistake, and he knew it. He was disappointed, ashamed, and angry. He told himsel...

Helen had passed a sleepless night and an unhappy morning. The surge of bitter anger which at first, like the ink, had blackened everything it touched, soon spent itself, and le...

In a roomy old house on Beacon Hill Dr. Frank Gleason made his home with his sister, Mrs. Ellery Thayer. The family were at their North Shore cottage, however, and only the doct...

Burke Denby was well pleased with the letter that he had sent to his wife, enclosing the ten-thousand-dollar check. He felt that it was both conclusive and diplomatic; and he be...

"Oh, yes; they care very much," smiled the doctor wearily; "but not in the way that is going to help any. I couldn't get _anything_ out of Burke, and I didn't get much more out...

Soon after the doctor started on his trip to the North the Thayers closed their Beacon Street home and went to their North Shore cottage. The move was made a little earlier than...

Dr. Gleason's Arctic trip, designed to cover a year of research and discovery, prolonged itself into three years and two months. Shipwrecks, thrilling escapes, months of silence...

In September Helen Denby and Dorothy Elizabeth went to London. With their going, a measure of peace came to Frank Gleason. Not having their constant presence to remind him of hi...

One by one the years slipped by, swiftly, with little change. In Boston, the doctor, trying not to count them, still had not forgotten. From Helen, through his sister, came glow...

It was three years before the doctor went up to Dalton again. It was on a sad errand this time. John Denby had died suddenly, and after an hour's hesitation, the doctor went up...

"No 'perhaps' to it," declared the doctor,--"if the boat gets here. You don't suppose she's going to delay any longer now, do you? Besides, isn't she starting for America about...

It was, indeed, quite "easy"--surprisingly so, as the doctor soon found out. Not without some trepidation, however, had he taken the train for Dalton the next morning and presen...

"I shall take you over, myself," said Helen to her daughter as they rose from the breakfast table that first day of October. "And I shall show you carefully just how to come bac...

Helen did not go with her daughter to Denby House the second morning. Betty insisted that she was quite capable of taking the short trip by herself and Helen seemed nothing loat...

"No, but I am to-morrow morning, very early, so I left my grip at the hotel. Yes, yes, I know--you'd have had me here, and routed the whole house up at midnight," he went on lau...

In thinking it over afterwards Burke Denby tried to place the specific thing that put into his mind that most astounding suggestion. He knew very well the precise moment of the...

Not until Burke Denby became convinced that Miss Elizabeth Darling was not his daughter did he realize how deeply the thought that she might be had taken hold of his very life--...

It was on a gray morning early in February that Betty found her employer pacing the library from end to end like the proverbial caged lion. When he turned and spoke, she was sta...