The Shield of Silence

Doris and Joan were in the living room of Ridge House trying to make things look "as usual" in the pathetic way people do after a loved one has gone forth never to return in qui...

David Martin came into the living room of Ridge House bringing, as it seemed, the Spring with him. He left the door open and sat down. He was in rough clothes; he was brown and...

The old New York house was once more opened and the fountain set free. Birds sang and flowers bloomed, but Joan was not there and for a blank but silent moment both Doris and Na...

The winter at Ridge House had revealed many things. It had been lonely, and it had brought conviction about Joan's absence. The girl was not coming back to them, that must be an...

The warm June sunlight lay over the broad lawns and meadows of Dondale; it touched with luring power the buds to blossom and, by its tricks of magic, girlhood to womanhood.

After Thornton's departure Doris metaphorically, drew a long breath. She felt that he would make no further move at present--how could he? As one faces a possible surgical opera...

It was all so exactly as it should be--the love affair of Nancy and Raymond--that it lacked excitement. There was a moment when Doris and David Martin looked into each other's e...

Joan had sung herself into an exalted mood. She had floated along on the wings of music, touching happy memories and tender, nameless yearnings. Her loved ones seemed crowding a...

The passing to and fro to the baggage car where Cuff, a crumpled and quivering mass, seemed to ask her what it all meant; the sense of eagerness to get to The Gap before it was...

A week later Joan started for New York, a closely packed suitcase in her hand, a closely packed trunk in the baggage car ahead, and some hurting memories to bear her company on...

When Joan and Patricia arose the following day they confronted life as two criminals might who realized that their only safety lay in flight, and that they must escape without r...

That was what David Martin felt was encompassing Joan. He wanted to take a hand in her affairs, but before he left Ridge House Doris made him promise that unless she changed her...

This was romance in an age when romance was supposed to be dead! Here they were, they two, nameless--for they decided upon remaining so--living according to their own codes; fee...

There is, in the human soul, as in the depths of the ocean, a state of eternal calm. Around it the waves of unrest may surge and roar but there peace reigns. In that sanctuary t...

It was just after sunset the following day when Jed turned from the Big Road into the River Road and thanked God that the next five miles could be made before early darkness set...

If the spring has a direct and concentrated effect upon a young man's fancy, it must have equal effect upon a young woman's, else the man's would perish and come to look upon th...

"It is the 'call' that makes everything possible or tragically wretched," she said, "and one cannot be blamed for being born deficient. Thank God I fitted in, though, when other...

George Thornton was a man who believed, or thought he did, in two controlling things in life: Intellect, and the training of intellect, by education and stern attention, to the...

She read it over and over and then, as was common with her, she clasped the cross that hung from her girdle--and opened her soul. She called it prayer. Meredith became personall...

Having adopted the children, having foregone her prejudices--good and evil--having set her feet upon the way, she meant to go unfalteringly on, and because doubts would assail h...

Because the woman in Joan had not been hurt by her experiences, because it was only the wildness of youth that had carried her to the verge of making mistakes and then sent her...

The girl was fair and delicately frail, but never ill. She wrote verse, when moved to do so, and did it excellently, and she never thought of it as poetry.

A week from that night Joan again eluded Sylvia. She did it by not going to the studio for dinner. She felt deceitful and mean, but there were heights--or were they depths?--tha...

The old restlessness and defiance were singing in the girl's blood; mockery rang in her voice and that wonderful laugh of hers. She was about to smash into the safe joyousness o...

There had been much damage done by the storm. Trees were lying across the muddy path; there were washed-out spots, making it necessary to go out of one's way. But Mary did not n...