Twos and Threes

All the next day, Sebastian Levi walked about with a throbbing head, and could not decide if he were suffering from the after-affects of ecstasy, wine, or metaphysics. Certainly...

Aureole was beset by a fear that her ejection of Vyvyan had somewhat impaired her claims to Bohemianism, as set forth by the advertisement. Wherefore it was one evening that she...

But it was the need to express the joyous and amazing romance of this which Sebastian had done, and the rejection of each confidant in turn as “not able to understand,” that had...

The shape began to assert itself already on the way to the Cecil. Merle, Peter and Stuart discovered that their three-cornered talk flashed forth with uncommon swiftness and bri...

Bertram was beginning to tire of Chavvy. Aunt Esther was beginning to tire of Bertram. And Mr. Lazarus, tailor, was quite obviously beginning to tire of Peter and her persistent...

Stuart’s departure meant for Peter and Merle a period of twoness deliciously free from the tension of extreme demand which he made upon their minds and bodies alike. Mentally an...

“I think it is going to be Logan Thane,” Peter decided, as she paused for a moment in the pleasing process of dressing for the dance, to stand bare-limbed before the fire, and f...

“I agree with you it would be far more effective to renounce that as well, and confront the world as the penniless son of the rich Ned Levi. But it isn’t done, my lad; if it wer...

Stuart solved the riddle which lay in the personality of Mine Host, by declaring that whereas in summer he followed the fair and guileless calling of hotel-keeper, in winter a b...

Granpa Cubitt’s sally was received with hearty cheers. And Luke whispered to Jinny: “He’s only starting now; you don’t know Granpa. He can make verses about anybody, jump up and...

He hesitated. It was her birthday, and she had been tipped, and was treating him. This would have seemed a natural proceeding a year ago, when he would have crammed himself to t...

The same evening, two girls were huddled in a doorway of His Majesty’s Theatre. They had drifted with the crowd down the stone steps leading from the Upper Circle, their brains...

“Garden-party weather,” grumbled Stuart. “S’pose they think they’re doing us a favour; one doesn’t want a breeze for sailing,--oh, no! Strawberries and cream and a band on the l...

Stuart Heron laid down the ponderous volume of Nietzsche, and smiled up lazily at his juvenile uncle-by-marriage: “Oh, we’re a depraved family! Not half an hour ago I caught Bab...

The end of September saw the Johnsons back again in their Turnham Green residence, named, somewhat misleadingly: “Town House.” Thus it was an easy matter for Mr. Johnson to say,...

Peter awoke, and, listening intently, heard nothing beyond a faint lapping of water. Yet she felt impelled to leave her bed and scramble up to the high narrow window-seat. She h...

“Mr. Heron is dressing, sir.” The butler at Careton House Terrace looked with some disfavour at the dishevelled wild-eyed young man, who at 7 p.m. on Christmas Day, rang such fr...

The girls knew that Stuart’s next act would be a carefully veiled apology to the spirit of the trio, for the moment he had been deaf to its call. Apology that would probably man...

Alighting at the tiny station of Thatch Lane, she was immediately lapped around with a cool bath of air, refreshing as water after the dust and turmoil of a day in London. She w...

It was not long before the well had been baled, the gaff run up, and a very wet mainsail flapped in mournful abandon against the mast. Then Stuart pushed off with the quant-pole...

Thus, gradually, belief was restored to Stuart, and faith in the vision, and the vision itself. And then came a quickening pride in the thought of Peter, battling through to the...

They were seated side by side upon a luggage-truck, in a deserted vaulty corner on the outskirts of Euston. In front of them were ranged battalions of empty luggage-trucks, stan...

“I thought you’d want to know,” said Baldwin, from whose brow the unwonted lines of anxiety had now been ironed away. “The whole business was a fake--and Gobert has vanished off...

Stuart began: “We shan’t care to be disturbed, so we’d better build under water. That stretch of river between Cliveden and Cookham would make quite a good ceiling. Nor will we...

Thus Merle’s evening at Lancaster Gate was doomed to be a solitary one. For Madame des Essarts had sallied forth, in diamonds and dignity, to a banquet celebrating the arrival i...

If Stuart had been a poor man, and forced to continue drudgery whatever his troubles of love, he would have wrested a certain comfort from the obligatory effort. But placed as h...

“That makes no difference if the spirit of May-day be in me. The weather is a sheer intoxication, and calls for revelry. It’s not your birthday by any chance, is it?”

It was such a very large room. And the child left over wanted badly to cry, because her toys had all been broken, because it was her birthday, because Peter had gone. But who co...

I. “--TO BONDAGE OF GREAT DEEDS” 1 II. A CHOICE OF HEROES 15 III. PLAYING AT GOD 29 IV. THE SHAPE OF THREE 47 V. DIAMONDS ARE TRUMPS 67 VI. MERLE 75 VII. PETER 84 VIII. STUART G...

I. “FOR HE HAD GREAT POSSESSIONS” 237 II. FOLLOW-MY-LEADER! 247 III. “RUN ON BOHEMIAN LINES!” 271 IV. IL TROVATORE 289 V. WORSHIPPERS ALL 313 VI. “TO TEST HER LOVE” 327 VII. JOH...

I. HAIRPIN VISION 153 II. A PRODIGAL FATHER 162 III. “WE TRAVEL LIGHT” 173 IV. WILD DUCK 192 V. THE WORLD WASHED CLEAN 206 VI. THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE ORANGE 219 VII. FORTUNATU...