Tower of Ivory: A Novel

“But one day you must—is it not so? I can speak plainly, for I am an old woman of the world that has grown fond of you, and there is no mystery about you whatever. Inheritance t...

Ordham, having felt himself expelled from those orderly conditions in which so many men dwell for a lifetime with only an occasional abortive protest, shot out by the dynamic po...

At half-past seven Ordham was shown in, exclaiming: “I am so sorry! But my driver went to sleep. I am positive of it. I spent the entire time between Barerstrasse and Schwabing...

“A year passed. I was bursting with life, with the desire to live. I was sick of being hidden away. My intellect forged steadily ahead in its persistent cravings, but other crav...

Excellenz noted that his eyes were less infantile than usual. “Well, later—I will take you to one of her routs,” she remarked indifferently, determined to do nothing of the sort...

Styr’s transitions from wildness to gloom, to bitter wildness again, then to a regal imperiousness, when she ordered Brängane to summon Tristan (which must have made the royal w...

Mrs. Felt shook her head. “He mopes terrible, sir. You wouldn’t think it of a man who loves a gun and a horse as he does—but those long evenings all alone! He don’t seem one to...

She looked so triumphant, so wholly beautiful, so like Isolde, that the colour mounted to his face, although she frightened him a little, and he wished he were ten years older....

“Either way of looking at it is a poor compensation for the disappointments of this life, when you are young, at least; and when you are old, you don’t care. The trouble is with...

“But I mean in London, where no one, that is only a few, really likes Wagner. Some one said yesterday that, although Styr’s personal success was beyond dispute, he feared the Wa...

As Ordham was escorted through the immense entrance hall and up to the reception room at the head of the grand staircase, then left where he could command a long vista, he felt...

As she concluded her little effort she looked eagerly at her husband, expecting a flash of gratitude from his expressive eyes, and not only for coming to his rescue, but for ref...

When Princess Nachmeister received in this room she wore a powdered wig and a brocade as stiff as a hoopskirt, consequently was less of an eyesore than usual. Ordham had murmure...

He nodded, holding his breath. She did not rise, nor repeat a word of the play, but he watched her skin turn grey, her muscles bag, the withering cracking soul stare through her...

There was no subtle hypnotic suggestion of death to-night in Styr’s gestures. Her art was no longer under the command of her will, but she radiated death and damnation as Trista...

“Ah, that I cannot tell you. Personally, I do not know Lady Bridgminster; but a friend of hers writes me these things. I am assured, however, that the girl is all that we could...

Ordham murmured his thanks, almost as much fascinated by the mother as by the daughter. Mrs. Cutting was not yet forty, very slim, Parisian, high-bred, not in the least faded, a...

The six horses seemed to take another leap through the air as they left the lower courtyard, and Ordham expected to land on the tree-tops below. But those horses, that had the m...

Lady Bridgminster drew a deep sigh of relief. “Then those wretched creditors of yours can be disposed of. The interviews I have had with them! What is the world coming to? My ow...

“And you would come back to Munich and lie on my divan! You are fast nibbling through the icing of what Excellenz calls the big black cake of life, my friend, and must now look...

“My husband is so ill (this, of course, is a profound secret) that I have persuaded him to go to his estate in Hungary and die in peace. Not that he has the least idea he must d...

He realized now why his spirits had gradually sunk below their normal level, save only when the drawing-rooms were full of kaleidoscopic guests; moreover, that resentment had st...

Styr had made up her mind: having delivered him from wreck, she would lead him to the threshold of his future, then return to her solitudes, pluming herself upon her successful...

But that she possessed the shrewdness and adaptability of her sex and race was indisputable. Her brain was active if empty, and he had observed that during the long hour of the...

And although he loved her the more for the pity that melted him every time he thought of that past she was forced to crowd out of her memory would she live at all, and admired h...

Ordham acquired a certain adroitness in changing the current of his mother’s thought by introducing the subject of her poverty. This was real enough. Her father grew stingier da...

A sharp wind was blowing from the Alps across the high plateau. Ordham pulled up the collar of his light overcoat and walked more briskly than was his habit. Illness might be co...

“Oh, do let us stay through the autumn! It is the ambition of my life to have a succession of house parties at Ordham.” Both eyes and voice pleaded. “Lady Bridgminster says that...

“To show what obstacles can be overcome by the power of the will and by ceaseless mental activity rightly directed. You have no obstacle to overcome but your indolence, which ma...

He was too indolent to cherish anger for any great length of time, but resentment lingered, and since his talk with the doctor not only had it increased, but he felt that old se...

This she had no mind to do, and her will was as strong as theirs combined; but she was worn with the unremitting silent struggle, the countless mortifications; she knew that the...

The ladies were shopping, he was informed, and he was shown up to the small drawing-room to await them. But the small drawing-room would not hold him, and he roamed about the be...

But he had himself well in hand. He had never been more indolent of manner, more alert in conversation. When he discovered that he was pitied as an object of hopeless passion, h...

And he knew that in no more direct fashion would she ever accept aid from him. Were she driven from one opera house to the next by the jealousies of the most jealous of all arti...

Nor did Ordham trouble himself to remember that all was not his. The first party was not over before he had slipped insensibly into the rôle of hereditary lord of the manor, for...

“DEAR MR. ORDHAM: The most dreadful thing has happened to me! I am threatened with a goitre!! I spent a part of last summer in the Bavarian Alps—I remember certain villages wher...

To-night, as she entered the hall, she was so still, so majestic, that she no longer looked a woman at all, save in so far as her slain womanhood may have risen to feed the purp...

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