The Silent Barrier

Helen had just descended the long flight of steps in front of the hotel. A tender purple light filled the valley. The nearer hills were silhouetted boldly against a sky of primr...

"It is a fact, nevertheless. On the day I arrived in Maloja, a letter came from the editor of 'The Firefly,' telling her that he had written to Spencer, whom he knew, and sugges...

Bower spoke curtly. Stampa and he were halfway across the narrow strip of undulating meadow land which shut off the hotel from the village. They had followed the footpath, a bus...

Mackenzie, of course, was aware that Miss Wynton would leave London by the eleven o'clock train on Thursday, and Spencer saw no harm in witnessing her departure. He found a good...

Barth, a good man on ice and rock, was not a genius among guides. Faced by an apparently unscalable rock wall, or lost in a wilderness of séracs, he would never guess the one wa...

Millicent was wondering how she would fare in the deep snow in boots that were never built for such a test. She was standing on the swept roadway between the hotel and the stabl...

Later, the American saw the two sitting in the hall. They were chatting with the freedom of old friends. Helen's animated face showed that the subject of their talk was deeply i...

Though the hut was a crude thing, a triumph of essentials over luxuries, Helen had never before hailed four walls and a roof with such heartfelt, if silent, thanksgiving. She sa...

Explanations of motive are apt to become tedious. They are generally inaccurate too; for who can reduce a fantasy to a formula? Nor should they ever be allowed to clip the wings...

Seldom, if ever, has a more strangely assorted party met at dinner than that which gathered in the Hotel Kursaal under the social wing of Mrs. de la Vere. Her husband, while bei...

At Coire, or Chur, as the three-tongued Swiss often term it--German being the language most in vogue in Switzerland--Helen found a cheerful looking mountain train awaiting the c...

It was one of those rare crises in life when the brain receives a presage of evil without any prior foundation of fact. Helen had every reason to welcome her friend, none to be...

Helen rose betimes next morning; but she found that the sun had kept an earlier tryst. Not a cloud marred a sky of dazzling blue. The phantom mist had gone with the shadows. Fro...

Both man and woman were far too well bred to indulge in an _oeillade_. The knowledge that each was thinking of the other led rather to an ostentatious avoidance of anything that...

The letter clerk seized a batch of correspondence and sorted it with nimble fingers. The form of the question told him that Spencer was interested in letters stamped for the gre...

A sustained rapping on the inner door of the hut roused Helen from dreamless sleep. In the twilight of the mind that exists between sleeping and waking she was bewildered by the...

Though Helen was the better linguist, it was left to Spencer to explain that circumstances would prevent the lady from going to Malenco that day. He did not fully understand why...