The Silver Poppy

It was a warm, humid evening of early September, and every window and skylight of Repellier's huge studio was open its widest. Between the muffled rhythm and beat of an orchestr...

"I'm not very big," she said wistfully; "I'm only one of those little harbor-tugs that wear the liners of life into their berths--for the port has its perils as well as the open...

Leave not thy slumbering melodies To dream too long within thine eyes; Let not all time thy bosom hold Song in that overfragrant fold, Lest thou a tardy gleaner prove And thy re...

Repellier had been prevailed upon to attempt a portrait of Mrs. Alfred Spaulding, and three times a week he came to her house to drink a cup of tea and to work, relaxingly, it i...

"Oh, I'm disgusted with myself, with everything," said Hartley, impatiently going to his window, where through the drifting rain he could see the misty gray Palisades of the Hud...

... A life By love's black frost all blighted and foregone, Glad that it suffers not; with sorrow in Its poor thin laughter sadder far than tears. Ah, more than pain in that aby...

Those should have been happy days for Hartley, yet they were not. As to just why they were not he had decided to hold question with himself no longer. He was persuading himself...

Cordelia failed to understand why she should feel so nervous. She half wished, as she climbed the long stairs leading up to Repellier's studio, that she had kept her promise wit...

Cordelia's train crept into Montreal one hour and twenty minutes late, and it was already after three before she stepped out of the overheated car into the cool, crisp air of th...

Some love your songs, but I who know The happier touch of lips whence flow These notes that all men turn to praise Loved you, the singer, all my days; And longing, listening, lo...

There was a touch of imperativeness in the hurriedly written little note that indefinitely appealed to him. It seemed to show him how much she had grown to lean on him. He assum...

And vain and empty stole away Their little seasons, one by one; And wearied while it yet was day They fell asleep beneath the sun, Ere once the dream or magic word Could swing t...

She, when all her maids were gone, With her cheek upon her hand, Gazed across a terraced lawn Down a twilit valley-land Where a white road twined and curled Through the hills th...

For two days Cordelia drove irrationally up and down beneath the windows of Hartley's apartments, hiding timorously back in the shadows of the curtained brougham, yet every aler...

"How much space shall I give Miss Vaughan?" Hartley asked of his editor. It was the end of the day following the interview, and the gentleman addressed was enjoying what he call...

"Wonderful, isn't it?" cried Hartley, leaning out of the wide-silled studio window where Repellier sat smoking wearily. He sniffed eagerly at the warm night air, with its mingle...

Then plant, by the right of the mind, By the power of the tome and scroll, Plant your heel on their neck, and grind, Or their millions will grind your soul.

It was Mrs. Spaulding who suddenly asked this of Cordelia, tumbling a lump of sugar into the depths of her coffee-cup as a figure and symbol of some vaster emotional descent.

The next afternoon they were on the Grand Battery, leaning against one of the obsolete old mortars that frowned down over the river. A calm sky of robin's-egg blue stretched ove...

Hartley was in a dilemma. He counted his money with some trepidation, and found that he possessed, all told, just four dollars and ninety cents, one dollar of which was to go fo...

For the second time Cordelia Vaughan had left Hartley stunned and amazed. Twice since he had first met her he looked up in bewilderment and found it necessary to readjust his es...

It's in the lulls of life that great things are lost and won.... You struggle against the tides that beset you, and you hold your own; but those tides never rest, and in the hou...

Cordelia had found, and with bewildered eyes was watching unfold, her first and only love. About the belated flowering of that tender and reluctant growth clung a touch of tragi...

Their talk had drifted round to this point because of a scene, of which Cordelia had been an unfortunate witness, the night before. A flurry of unexpected bills had come in at t...

When Hartley turned the last page of The Silver Poppy he closed the book meditatively but amazed. In it he had found the golden key to a long-closed mystery. In it he had seen r...

My astral messenger then turned her eyes In sad tranquillity unto that night Wherein the temple of the summit lies, And spake unto my ear: "'Tis more the fight Than all the idle...

Hartley had to wait in the library for some time; he sat in the dusky, massive room wondering why he should listen so eagerly for Cordelia's step. When she did come down--she ha...

The lights of Cordelia's little yellow-trimmed study were carefully shaded and softened. Cordelia herself, with bright but restless eyes, with a slightly flushed face, and a lit...

The lute forgetful of its note; The wing remembering not to fly In some sweet flight's mad ecstasy; The heart that failed to carve the form Since once the musing soul grew warm...

Yet life's long silence, after song, Can do thy lyric heart no wrong. Once broken music fell from thee, While now--now thou art harmony. Those notes that soared from thee of old...