The Tyranny of Weakness

Except for the low yet hysterical moaning of the woman in the chair and the distant whistle of a Hudson River boat, there was complete silence in the small room, while the man s...

"On one of the cross streets in the forties in New York City there's a hotel called the Van Styne with a reputation none too savory and downtown there's a sort of mission organi...

It was a sleepless night for every one in the house of Eben Tollman. Conscience still felt that her long fight had ended in a total defeat and that she had been saved from worse...

Thinking through days when a cold and tortured moisture would burst out on her temples and through nights when she lay wide-eyed and sleepless, only one answer seemed to come to...

Conscience was sitting on the terrace one day with a book, which she smilingly laid down as her husband joined her. Eben took up the small volume of Browning's verse and idly tu...

AS they went together down the steep path, there was no flaw in the woman's composure and no fault in the lightness of her manner, but when they reached the float, with the dark...

"You are looking very serious, dearest," he declared in a tone of assumed lightness, marred by a cumbersome quality which made it grotesque. As his voice broke on her reverie, h...

The living-room held a glow of mellow light, but as Eben returned with the three brimming glasses, Conscience touched a button which darkened the wall sconces and left only the...

Stuart Farquaharson had tempered a dignified strength with a gracious fortitude. He had endured slanderous charges and stood with the steadiness of a reef-light when Conscience...

When the bridesmaids entered it was a pale but firm face that greeted them. "It was panic," said Conscience slowly. "If I hadn't decided freely and fully and finally, I wouldn't...

Subconsciously his senses recorded small and actual things as the vessel lurched through a heavy sea: the monotonous rat-tat of the brass door-hook against the woodwork, and the...

The sand bar rose like a white island beyond the mild surf of the shore, distant enough to make it a reservation for those hardier swimmers who failed to find contentment betwee...

The days that followed were troubled days and they brought to Conscience's cheeks an accentuated pallor. Under her eyes were smudges that made them seem very large and wistful....

In Boston Eben would have been safely housed against the storm, but Eben was not in Boston. He had driven to the village and put his horse and buggy in the livery stable. At the...

Twenty minutes later Stuart Farquaharson swung himself to the driver's seat of his low-hung roadster, and threw on the switch, while Billy Stirling and the others stood at the c...

After awhile her lashes trembled and rose flickeringly upon the vague perplexity of returning consciousness. Her head ached and her muscles were cramped, because she had crumple...

Less in words than by a subtle though unmistakable manner, the husband made it clear to Stuart Farquaharson that his status in this establishment was to be as intimately free as...

When they had talked for ten minutes Stuart abruptly exclaimed, "Dearest, it was not far from this spot that you once told me you loved me in every way you knew how to love: tha...

Stuart Farquaharson had that habit of self-analysis which often compelled him to take his own life into the laboratory of reflection and study its reactions with an almost imper...

About the churchyard, like sentinels of peace, stood ranks of elms and silver oaks. They had been old and gnarled of trunk, when the man whose life had just guttered out inside...

When Stuart presented himself at breakfast the next morning his eyes were black-ringed with sleeplessness, but his riding boots were freshly polished and his scarf tied with ext...

For the best part of an hour Stuart sat confusedly looking out across the cove. Then with the wish for some stimulating fillip he stripped and plunged into the sobering coolness...

"And so you left us, an unknown, and return a celebrity!" Conscience's voice and eyes held a hint of raillery which made Stuart say to himself: "Thank God she has not let the fo...

In the library at the old manse that afternoon there was less of sunlight and joy. Shadows hung between the walls and there were shadows, too, in the heart of one of the men who...

Stuart Farquaharson's first impulse upon finding his surprise for the meeting unshared, was an astonishment at Marian herself. Unless some great urgency existed for an immediate...

Sam Haymond, D.D., gathering together his belongings, as the train whistled for the village, fancied that he could visualize with a fair accuracy the gentleman who had written,...

She came to a stop and sat looking out at the phosphorescent sea and the star-filled skies. Farquaharson leaned forward, his words coming brokenly and in a heavy misery of embar...

To Tollman's eyes familiar with content and superscription, it was all glaringly conspicuous. The initials seemed to stand out like headlines, but Farquaharson was without suspi...

The visitor did not miss the sudden and instinctive change on the face of her hostess or the impulsive start as if to draw back in distaste. Conscience evidently saw in this vis...

For a little while the study remained silent, except for the excited panting of the minister, whose face was a mask of fury. The passion in Conscience's eyes was gradually fadin...

But that night it happened, as it had happened once before, that the stars seemed exaggerated in size and multiplied in number. On the breeze came riding the distant voice of th...

They were types in embryo, but of course they did not know it. No more would a grain of wheat and a poppy seed dropping side-by-side in a fallow place reflect upon their destini...

The logs on the hearth leaped and crackled, spurting tongues of blue flame, and after they had roared up to their fullest they slowly subsided, until the shadows about the walls...