Vision House

Marise and Mary Sorel talked late that night in the girl's room. The family breadwinner--always indulged--had not been so petted, so spoiled, since she was threatened with _grip...

So this--_this_--was her Man of Mystery, he who had held in unseen hands more than half her thoughts for a delicious fortnight! She had deigned to advertise in a newspaper for t...

The passenger list of the _Britannia_ was posted up close to the lift on B deck, but the weather had not encouraged curious groups to study and inwardly digest its items. In fac...

"Thank Heaven she's gone, and it's ten minutes past!" fervently sighed Mrs. Sorel, as the door closed behind a guest she had kissed warmly on both cheeks. "Celine, 'phone down a...

It was in her dressing-room at the theatre--the marvellous dressing-room which Belloc had engaged Herte to re-decorate as a tribute and a surprise to the star. The stage curtain...

Marise hesitated. Her brain was not clear. She felt dazed, as if Zelie had boxed her ears, as she had boxed Tony's earlier. She longed for sympathy. No one--not even Garth himse...

The next day Garth received a telegram urging him to come at once to the Grand Canyon. He was needed because of some work at Vision House which had been stopped for his decision.

Marise and Garth neatly arranged their life according to stateroom etiquette on shipboard. When one was in the bedroom the other was in the sitting-room next door. They were lik...

Jorn Garth considered himself completely justified in shooting Severance with a pint of iced ginger-beer, and even had his conscience squirmed he would have committed the act. K...

It was, as Severance told himself, the damnedest scrape! And he could see no present way out of it. Turn as he would, he was merely running round and round in a "vicious circle."

It was a strange and strained luncheon, for those present (with the exception of "Pobbles") talked very little and thought so much that it seemed to each one as if his or her th...

Marise guessed that Mums had had the young men up in order to tell them what she chose about Major Garth's future movements before Garth had time to arrive and speak for himself...

"Anyhow, I should feel a brute sleeping calmly here, with you sitting on a hard bench out of doors. I may not be a very nice person," Marise criticised herself, "but I'm not a t...

"Dear Tony," she wrote, for she felt the warm affection of an Egeria, mingled with that of a mother-in-law elect, for him: and it pleased all that was snobbish in her soul to ha...

"Dear child, I promised you shouldn't be disturbed, whatever happened, but Tony has been telephoning for the sixth time to-day. Poor boy! He's very anxious about you. Don't look...

Marise started late for the theatre, because she felt unequal to coping with her fellow actors' and actresses' well-meaning good wishes. She went alone with Celine, for Mums had...

"Oh, by the way, Miss Marks," said Marise, "you needn't trouble to read my letters this morning. I--er--slept badly, and I'm up at such an unearthly hour, I might as well go thr...

"Oh, Tony, what a downfall of our castle in the air!" were Mary's first words, as she held out her hands to Severance. "This beautiful Bell Towers, where we hoped we should be s...

Mothereen led them over the house, which was built in bungalow style, all on one floor, saying to Garth, "Do you remember this? Do you remember that?" and pointing out to Marise...

"Not to remember that man named Garth, in your regiment, who was promoted from a private to be an officer, and won the V.C. I think it was Mums who asked you about him one day,...

Marise knew as little as possible of her own country. Her early memories wavered between New York when things went well, and Brooklyn or even Jersey City when the family luck wa...

She looked like a creature of moods and storms and sudden revolts, but her behaviour as a typist-stenographer belied her appearance as a woman. Not only was she always on time,...

A girl in love with one man, flinging herself at the head of another out of pique or something worse, should have been utterly careless how she appeared to the eyes of the latte...

She saw him before she saw Garth and "Pobbles," and her eyes took in his perfection of tailorhood. Then Garth came forward, and she was struck with surprise by the uniform of th...

Marise stood on the high terrace which looked towards the rose-and-gold gulf of the Canyon. Gazing out, between the dark slim trunks of pines, she saw the sunlight moving slowly...

She tried to think of Tony Severance, who must be suffering tortures through his love and fears for her. But somehow he had lost importance. He had become a figure in the backgr...

If Garth had appeared two minutes earlier, he need have suffered no uncertainty about Marise. But unfortunately she was not in these days the romantic heroine of a stage play. C...

The hot torrent of words ceased. There was silence in the gaily-tinted, flower-filled salon, save for the tick of an absurd Louis Seize clock on the mantel. Under the gilt wheel...

"A private sitting-room! And Jack Garth's money pays for it," she thought dully. But of course it was nothing to her. At least, it would have been nothing if, while keeping it s...

After all, Severance had hardly expected a more brilliant result from his bluff. The one real failure was in losing his temper, which, when discussing his plan with Mums, he'd m...

Celine was a fervent admirer of Lord Severance. Half Greek, she had heard him called. To her he was wholly Greek: a Greek god. Indeed, he was miles handsomer than "_cet Apollon...

If Zelie Marks had been a malicious girl she could, with a few words through the telephone or on paper, have spoiled at a stroke such few chances of happiness as remained to Garth.

The next thing that Marise knew, she was on the platform, being hugged and kissed by the little woman in black, admired by a pair of big, wide-apart blue eyes under black hair t...

"You said at the theatre, if I trusted you enough to come here with you," Marise began as Celine left, "you would tell me a plan you thought I'd approve. Well, I did trust you!...

Severance hadn't shown himself at the theatre because, thanks to Garth, he was not looking his best. Neither was Garth, who, on the contrary, looked and felt his worst. Unlike S...

After the first dazed instant, the girl had a wild inclination to laugh. She suppressed it with the explosive struggle of suppressing a sneeze. Poor, dear Tony! It would be crue...

This was not quite as reassuring, somehow, as the sender intended it to be. There seemed to be a hidden meaning behind the words, which twanged the wrong chords of Severance's e...

It was just this that the girl had had: the shock of her life. She, undesired--_not_ a temptation! Alone with a man--a mere brute--who had the strength and the legal right to ta...