Tomorrow's tangle

The vast, gray expanse of the desert lay still as a picture in the heat of the early afternoon. The silence of waste places held it. It was gaunt and sterile, clad with a drab g...

“How the world is made for each of us! How all we perceive and know in it Tends to some moments’ product thus, When a soul declares itself--to wit: By its fruit, the thing it do...

That night the two miners rolled themselves in their blankets and lay down on the expanse of slippery grass under the pine. Moreau did not sleep soon. The day’s incidents were t...

“I choose to be yours for my proper part, Yours, leave me or take, or mar or make; If I acquiesce, why should you be teased With the conscience prick and the memory smart?”

Four months after the death of Dan Moreau his adopted daughter, Mariposa, sat at the piano, in a small cottage on Pine Street, in San Francisco, singing. Her performance was les...

At two o’clock on the afternoon of her party Mrs. Willers was giving the finishing touches to her rooms. These were a sitting and bedroom in one of the large boarding-houses tha...

After he had put Mariposa on her car, Essex went down town to the paper with some copy. He was making a fair living on _The Trumpet_, and the work he was doing suited him. He th...

From his first meeting with her, Barry Essex had conceived a deep interest in Mariposa. He had known women of many and divers sorts, and loved a few after the manner of his kind...

A week had not passed since the night at the opera when Mariposa received a hasty letter from Mrs. Willers. It was only a few lines scrawled on a piece of the yellow paper affec...

As the carriage turned the corner into Third Street, Shackleton and Mrs. Willers, bidding their adieux to Lepine, started toward _The Trumpet_ office. The building was not ten m...

“Praised be the fathomless universe For life and for joy and for objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love--but praise, praise, praise, For the sure-enwinding arms...

Jake Shackleton did not come up from San Mateo on Monday, as Mrs. Willers expected, and the first intimation he had of Lucy’s death was the short notice in the paper.

“Man is the hunter; woman is his game, The sleek and shining creatures of the chase. We hunt them for the beauty of their skins; They love us for it, and we ride them down.”

The day broke overcast and damp, one of those depressing days of still, soft grayness that usher in the early rains, when the air has a heavy closeness and the skies seem to sag...

For two days after her hysterical outburst Mariposa kept her room, sick in body and mind. The quick succession of nerve-shattering events, ending with the death of Shackleton, s...

Two hours before the cries of the newsboys announcing the sudden demise of his chief had struck on his ear, for the first moment freezing him into motionless amazement. Standing...

The long work of settling up the great estate which had been left to the widow and her children, required their presence in the city, and the shock which Bessie had suffered in...

To the astonishment of his world, Win Shackleton announced his intention of retaining _The Trumpet_, and conducting it, himself, on the lines laid down by his father. There was...

The third boarder at the Garcias’ was Isaac Pierpont, the teacher of singing. The Garcia house offered, at least, the one recommendation of being a place wherein musically incli...

Win found his mother in her boudoir and delivered Mrs. Willers’ letter to her without comment. He saw her read it and then sit silent, her brows drawn, looking into the fire bes...

Mariposa’s sixteen dollars a month had been augmented to twenty-eight by the accession of three new pupils. These had been acquired through Isaac Pierpont, who was glad to find...

Had Essex realized that Mrs. Willers was an adverse agent in his pursuit of Mariposa, he would not have greeted her with the urbane courteousness that marked their meetings. He...

At _The Trumpet_ office the next morning Essex found a letter awaiting him. It was from Mrs. Shackleton, asking him to dinner on a certain evening that week--“very informally, M...

The morning after her interview with Essex Mariposa had appeared at breakfast white-cheeked and apathetic. She had eaten nothing, and when questioned as to her state of health h...

It was the afternoon of Edna Willers’ music lesson. Over a week had elapsed since Mariposa’s interview with Essex, yet to-day, as she stood at her window looking out at the thre...

Under cover of the darkness Essex hurried down the street toward where the city passed from a place of homes to a business mart. He had at first no fixed idea of a goal, but aft...

The fears of Mrs. Garcia held Barron to the house till the morning light was fully established. This was late, even for the winter season, as the rain still fell heavily, retard...

It had been close upon half-past two when Harney had left the house in Bush Street. Essex at the window had heard the sound of his retreating feet soon lost in the rush of the r...

At ten o’clock Barron returned to the Garcia house. His search for Mariposa in such accustomed haunts as the Mercantile Library, the shops on Kearney Street, and Mrs. Willers’,...

The plant of the Silver Star Mine lay scattered along the edge of a mountain river on the site of one of the camps of forty-nine. Where the pioneers had scratched the surface wi...