The White Kami: A Novel

Her name was Stella, and she did not like her name. Her hair was quite lustrous, but she did not like her hair, either, and stood combing it jerkily before a glass which possess...

Alone in the street car, Stella brooded it all miserably. “How unhappy I am,” she thought. And then she faltered: “I didn’t realize....” Yet she asked herself, too, what could b...

At eleven o’clock the ballroom was crowded. Elsa Utterbourne, in a handsome, severe, somehow almost boyish gown, was the centre of interest, and about her revolved giddily the e...

Captain Utterbourne was involved with a vague but immensely lucrative corporation calling itself the Hyde Packet Company. The business was tramp freighters—vessels of one or two...

The day before he had shown an obliging chandlery clerk over the _Skipping Goone_, “upstairs and down,” and the clerk had an eagle eye for such missing items as deck hose and ca...

Meantime, Elsa Utterbourne’s ball had certainly proved the turning point for Stella! All at once her life seemed packed with romance, and the bewildered girl who had rebelled so...

She was now Mrs. Ferdinand King, and had sailed away in Captain Utterbourne’s _Star of Troy_ on a honeymoon full of mystery—one destined to carry her not even she knew whither o...

The first thing of which Jerome was conscious was a feeling that the covers had slid off. They sometimes did, for he was a trifle too long for his bed and frequently threshed th...

It was very curious to feel that he had lived with himself, in a condition of rather close intimacy, all these years without realizing that he was capable of supreme emotions. J...

Before port was reached two facts important to this history had been established: the first that Jerome was to join the troupe—not, indeed, as a member of the chorus (since he h...

Hagen’s island—a tiny realm of wonder and suspense.... There it lay, lost in a warm and dreaming sea, a blue on all sides of uncompromising intensity. Yes, the island, saturated...

“Oh yes!” she laughed softly. “It’s so beautiful I almost want to cry sometimes. And the silence.... Oh,” she exclaimed, “I tried so hard to imagine what our life was going to b...

It was before dawn—a dark and heavy hour, with the stars just dimming and a light wind in the jungle. Stella was asleep, dreaming: she seemed to be out on the rocks of the shore...

Jerome gradually learned the ways of the formidable box office, and took charge of the General Ledger. Thus his time was abundantly filled: during the day hustling around with b...

Jerome had failed with Stella; she had thrown him over for another man; now he had found Lili—had almost desperately, without quite realizing it, seized upon her. He needed her—...

The _Skipping Goone_ was all prepared, at a little before sundown, to sail away from the triumphant scene of Xenophon Curry’s first venture. Everything was ship-shape. The sceni...

The mats were drawn at the windows and the lamp was lighted in their “parlour.” It was a night of warm nervous wind, and, though the pounding of the surf produced a roar which n...

Tsuda was everywhere, sweating, swearing in breezy English, heaving out torrents of instruction in Ainu, to which the sad parties to this “experiment in transplanting” would lis...

At first Stella carried on the mood of this new rebellion. Did he expect her to settle down on this lonely island like a dull little mouse and meekly take whatever came to her,...

The marriage of Jerome and Lili naturally caused quite a bit of romantic stir among the members of Xenophon Curry’s little troupe. A very hilarious party was given to celebrate...

As the _Skipping Goone_ approached the harbour, a sailing skiff was sighted making straight out for the incoming schooner: a small pleasure craft with graceful lines, which had...

His small son had really begun to usurp his entire horizon. Jerome was about the proudest father ever seen. But the estrangement of Jerome and Lili came to be a more or less ope...

Time stood still—or rather time crept forward like a snail, and seemed unmoving. The hours of each day stole on like the tide, slow, achingly slow; or like a hill of sand which...

The former delight of their life together was frequently turned to bitterness by just such disillusionizing scenes as this. The time had long passed when she could please and am...

Cha-cha-kamui (English version: Very-Old-and-Very-Wonderful) had dressed up in his robe of state, a most gaudy creation of red and white cloth. He wore a great crown made of coc...

Life aboard the _Skipping Goone_ was much sobered by the death of the little baby. Lili, though her grief was genuine enough, found a vague refuge in knowing herself a center of...

The wind, capricious in the extreme, settled on the last day out from Borneo into an uncompromising head wind. The schooner laboriously plowed along toward Sandakan, on the Born...

Perhaps she knew when he passed over the fatal boundary; perhaps she knew when there could be no more returning. But it seemed to matter so little now. It was all so ancient, so...

“When I was a child,” he said, “I lived in an orphan asylum. It stood on a hill, and down below there were a lot of iron foundries. The air was always full of smoke. It came up...

The inhabitants of Sandakan are still talking about it. You can corner any one, native or trader, and get a first-hand account of the amazing spectacle which saluted the eyes of...

Yes, the _Star of Troy_ had slipped into the harbour of Sandakan, and rode there at anchor in a dreamy way, as though, despite her grim and business-like appearance, it had sudd...

“Did you ever hear of Daedalus?” asked Captain Utterbourne dreamily when his caller had been shown into the little white cabin he called his shop. “I’ve just come across a fasci...

It was a new phase of life entirely. The _Star of Troy_ was not the _Skipping Goone_; yet was, in her way, quite as romantic. Jerome had a feeling from the very first that the _...

Jerome knelt beside the grave in the shadow of great palms. In the midst of this world of silence he suddenly felt a little self-conscious. Impulse, he feared, had carried him t...

“I want you to see for yourself, Captain—gn—what I’ve been up against here,” wheezed Tsuda, adding in high-pitched oriental petulance: “For months every damn scrap of business f...

Strange forces were at work in the world; but the sun came up still and flashing out of the sea, and the birds had business of their own to attend to.