Category: Novels

The Sacred Fount

It was an occasion, I felt--the prospect of a large party--to look out at the station for others, possible friends and even possible enemies, who might be going. Such premonitions, it was true, bred fears when they failed to breed hopes, though it was to be added that there we...

Chapters

1. Part 1

It was an occasion, I felt--the prospect of a large party--to look out at the station for others, possible friends and even possible enemies, who might be going. Such premonitio...

2. Part 2

"If I do I shall see a great deal more than I now suspect." He wanted to get off to dress, but I still held him. "Isn't she wonderfully lovely?"

3. Part 3

We had gone on, with this, a few steps, but my companion again checked me, while her nod toward a window gave my attention a lead. "Won't _that_, as it happens, then do?" We cou...

4. Part 4

"It isn't the image of yours," Obert said to me, fitting the cap, "but it's a funny thing that it should really recall to one some face among us here, on this occasion--I mean s...

5. Part 5

Mrs. Brissenden's look at me was for a moment of the least accommodating; then it changed to an intelligent smile. "How you _are_ protecting her! But don't cry out," she added,...

6. Part 6

Discretion, then, I finally felt, played an odd part when it simply left one more attached, morally, to one's prey. What was most evident to me by five o'clock in the afternoon...

7. Part 7

There was a sound in the question that would have made me, to my own sense, start, though I as quickly hoped I had not done so to Brissenden's. I couldn't have persuaded myself,...

8. Part 8

Well, I knew within the minute that I was moved by it as by an extraordinary tenderness; so that this is the name I must leave it to make the best of. It had already been my imp...

9. Part 9

Nothing could have been stranger than for _me_ so to know it was while the stricken parties themselves were in ignorance; but nothing, at the same time, could have been, as I ha...

10. Part 10

Whatever there might have been for me of pain or doubt was washed straight out by the special sensation of seeing how "clever" poor Long not only would have to be, but confident...

11. Part 11

The condescension of her consent to think marked itself handsomely enough. "Is it your idea to pretend to me that I'm keeping Grace Brissenden awake?" There was consistency enou...

12. Part 12

Any reference, I saw, would have been difficult to _me_, had I unluckily been forced to approach her. What would have made the rare delicacy of the problem was that blankness it...

13. Part 13

I took time myself now to relight. Ridiculous as it may sound, I had my nerves to steady; which is a proof, surely, that for real excitement there are no such adventures as inte...

14. Part 14

He said it as if I had, after all, not been playing fair, and it made me for an instant hesitate. "No, I really don't know. But it's exactly what I shall perhaps now learn."

15. Part 15

"Precisely"--and I recalled for her the one she had made most of. "There was in especial the appearance that she was at a particular moment using Brissenden to show whom she was...

16. Part 16

She fronted me, after all, still so bravely that I believed her for an instant not to be, on this article, without an answer she could produce. The unexpected therefore broke fo...

17. Part 17

"You wouldn't, in spite of your belief,"--I smiled at her--"like to be a little further off yet?" But before she could answer, and because also, doubtless, the question had too...

18. Part 18

She quite agreed with me that it was lucky, but without prejudice to his acuteness and to what had been in him moreover a natural revulsion. "He has seen, in short; there comes...