Short Fiction quotes

To the world, as I have found it, success is a crime, and its atonement, not death, but torture. Truly, Miss Menemon, humanity is not admirable. Men mean well enough, no doubt; but nature is against them.

Libel is the tribute that failure pays to success.

If I am slandered, it is because I have succeeded. But what is said of my father is wholly true. He did make shoes, God bless him! and very good shoes they were. Pardon me for not having said so before.”

Ruin a man’s home, he may forget it. But excel him, do him a favor, show yourself in any light his superior, then indeed is the affront great.

Mediocrity is unforgiving.

We pretend to admire greatness, but we isolate it and call that isolation Fame. It is above us; we cannot touch it; but mud is plentiful and that we can throw.

An hour passed, and still she sat unassured, restless of thought and conscious only that an encroaching darkness had obscured a vista on which her eyes had loved to dwell.

Truly the heart has logic that logic does not know

, and as Eden let the incidents of the afternoon and of the previous evening parade in dumb show before her, something there was that kept whispering that she was taking appearances for facts.

Mrs. Manhattan nodded.

“Well,” she said, with an air of profound sapience, “no man ever talks to a woman for two hours unless he keeps saying the same thing all the time.”

“Laura, that is not like you. You know perfectly well that friendship can exist between a man and a woman without there being any thought of lovemaking.”

“Laura, I am in no mood for jest. Last night I believed my husband, today I do not. If I can get proof, I leave him.”

“That is what we all say, but we don’t.”

“If he has deceived me—”

No, Eden, be a hypocrite. We all are; everyone prefers it. There was a man once who got up in the morning with the idea of telling everybody the truth. By sunset he was safe in an asylum.

People don’t want the truth; they content themselves with sighing for it; they know very well that when they get in its way, it bites.

It is vicious, truth is. It makes us froth at the mouth. If you haven’t had the forethought to cuirass yourself with indifference, truth can cause a hydrophobia for which the only Pasteur is time. No, hypocrisy has had the sanction of pope and prelate.

And Eden, influenced either by the caress of the words or that longing which in moments of mental anguish forces us to voice the affliction, though it be but to a wall, looked in his face and answered:

“A hole has been dug in my heart, and in that hole is hate.”

“Hate? Why, hate is a medieval emotion; you don’t know what it means.” And as he spoke he told himself she was mad.

“A hole has been dug in my heart, and in that hole is hate.”

“Hate? Why, hate is a medieval emotion; you don’t know what it means.”

And as he spoke he told himself she was mad.

“Eden, you understand it so well that your conception of love must be clearer still.”

“Love, indeed!” She laughed disdainfully. “Why, love is a fever that ends with a yawn. Love! Why, men used to die of love. Now they buy it as they buy their hats, ready-made.”

“Then I am in that fever now—Hush! here is your husband. The tenor wasn’t half bad, I admit. Mr. Usselex, I am glad to see you.”

but in freedom is a balm that cures. Her strength might be irrevocable and the cicatrices not to be effaced, yet give her that balm, and come what sorrow could. As for resignation, the idea of it did not so much as visit her.

Resignation is a daily suicide, and she had not enough to outlast the night.

The hours limped. The afternoon was on the wane, and still she toyed with sorrow until suddenly she bethought herself of the need of immediate action. Usselex would presently return, but when he came again to her room, he should find it empty.

“I don’t bear your name,” Eden called after him, but he had gone.

“I don’t bear your name; I throw it to the mud from which it sprang.”

“And you are right, Miss Menemon,” Maule echoed. “You are right to do so.” And again he moved to her.

she was trembling. Evidently the excitement had been too much for her. “Don’t touch me,” she repeated; and drawing from him as from a distasteful thing, she added, with a look of scorn that an insulted princess might have exhibited:

“Though you have not a lackey’s livery, you have a lackey’s heart.”

“Eden, I beg of you—” Mr. Menemon began. But the girl had turned her back, and divining the uselessness of any admonition, the old gentleman addressed himself to Maule.

She stepped back to elude him, but he caught her by the wrist.

“Look at me,” he continued. “It took fifty years to make my hair gray; one day has made it white.”

Eden succeeded in disengaging herself from his grasp, and she succeeded the more easily in that a servant unobserved by her, yet seen by Usselex, had entered the room. He loosed his hold at once and glanced at the man.

In that second,

Eden, with the prescience that is said to visit those that drown, went forward and back, into the past and into the future as well.

Amid her scattered yesterdays she groped for a promise. Of the unanswering morrows she called for release, and as her husband stood up, preparing to read what she had written, she felt herself the depository of shame.

There are many beautiful things in the world, and among them, near the head of the list, stands dawn in the tropics.

It is sudden as love, and just as fair.

Throughout the night the ship had been sailing beneath larger stars than ours, in waters that were seamed and sentient with phosphorus;

“But will you not take them?” he asked, referring to the bags of money which, awkwardly enough, he still held out to her.

“Get back, Spaniard, into the night from which you came. I gave you love, you bring me gold. I gave my trust, you ask a receipt. You shall have it.”

She had moved forward near to him again, and glared in his face.

and also the surety of his skill in transition—the art with which he would pass from one idea to another, connect them both with a gesture, and complete the subject with a smile.

The raconteur is usually a bore. When he is not, he is a wizard.

And as Roland passed from one peak of the Himalayas to another, over one of the two that listened he exerted a palpable spell.

The injury, it is true, was one of his own doing. But, curiously enough, when a man injures another the more wanton that injury is the less it incites to repentance. In certain dispositions it becomes a source of malignant hate.

Deserve a man’s gratitude, and he may forgive you; but let him do you a wrong, and you have an enemy for life.

Such is the human heart—or such at least was Roland Mistrial’s.

Again her lips moved and she seemed to smile, but now her eyes were no longer in his, they were fixed on some vista visible only to herself. She looked rapt, but she looked startled as well.

When a girl first stands face to face with love it allures and it frightens too.

Roland dropped her hand; he caught his horse and mounted it. In a moment he was at her side again.

she gives either the firstfruits of her affection, or else the semblance of an after-growth. There are men, there are husbands and lovers even, who will accept that after-growth and regard it as the verdure of an enduring spring.

But who, save a lover, is ever as stupid as a husband?

Man, on the other hand, is constant never. Civilization has not improved him in the least.

but those moments had passed, the possibility with them; and this evening as she sat in the stalls her outward appearance was much such as it had been two years before.

But within, where her heart had been, was a cemetery.

Among our friends and acquaintances there are always those who to our knowledge have tombstones of their own. But there are others that evolve a world—one that glows, subsides, and dies away unknown to any save themselves. The solitudes of space appall;

Among our friends and acquaintances there are always those who to our knowledge have tombstones of their own. But there are others that evolve a world—one that glows, subsides, and dies away unknown to any save themselves.

The solitudes of space appall; the solitudes of the heart can be as endless as they.

In those which Justine concealed, a universe had had its being and its subsidence; a universe with gem-like hopes for stars—one in which the sun had been so eager its rays had made her blind.

The humiliation which the knowledge of self-deception brings is great, but when that knowledge becomes common property the humiliation is increased. The world—not the world that ought to be, but the world as it is—is more apt to smile than condole.

There may be much joy in heaven over the sinner that repents: on earth the joy is at his downfall.

And according to the canons we have made for ourselves, Justine, in listening to the dictates of her heart instead of to those of her father, had sinned, so grievously even that that father had bid her begone from his sight.

… last what he meant—understanding that he would have her feign a compliance for the sake of coin which at her father’s death she could come back and share with him—when, divining the infamy of his thought, she refused, he had struck her in the face.

Because a man is not Chesterfield, it does not follow he is Sykes.

Mistrial had never struck a woman before, and in this initial assault it is probable that he was actuated less by a desire to punish than by that force which overmasters him who has ceased to be master of himself.

It is an antique virtue, that of forbearance; it is Biblical, nobly Arthurian, and chivalresque. But when we smile at an injury, it is for policy’s sake—because we fear, rarely because we truly forgive, more rarely yet because of indifference.

Our magnanimity is cowardice. It takes a brave man to wreak a brave revenge.

Mistrial made few pretensions to the virtues which you and I possess. He was relentless as a Sioux, and he was treacherous as the savage is; he had no taste for fair and open fight.

… at the thought of what Thorold’s frenzy must be, at the picture which he drew of him cursing his own imprudence and telling himself again and again, until the repetition turned into mania, that that imprudence could never be undone, he exulted and laughed aloud.

Money, said Vespasian, has no odor.

To our acuter nostrils it has: so nauseating even can it be, that we would rather be flung in the Potter’s-field than catch the faintest whiff. But Mistrial, for all the sensitiveness that ancestry is supposed to bring, must have agreed with the Roman.

But Mistrial, for all the sensitiveness that ancestry is supposed to bring, must have agreed with the Roman. To him it was the woof of every hope; whatever its provenance, it was an Open Sesame to the paradise of the ideal.

He would have drawn it with his teeth from a dung-heap, only he would have done it at night.

There are men that can steal a fortune, yet can never cheat at cards, and Mistrial was one of their race; he could not openly dishonor himself in petty ways. Many a scoundrel has a pride of his own.

Then came the debit account. Amounts due to this estate, to that, and to the other, a list of items extending down an entire page of foolscap and extending over onto the next. There a balance had been struck.

Instead of millions Honest Paul had left dishonor. Swindled by the living, he had swindled the dead.

“So much for trusting a man that bawls Amen in church,” mused Mistrial.

There a balance had been struck. Instead of millions Honest Paul had left dishonor. Swindled by the living, he had swindled the dead.

“So much for trusting a man that bawls Amen in church,” mused Mistrial.

As yet the completeness and amplitude of the disaster had not reached him. While he ran the papers over he feigned to himself that it was all some trick of Thorold’s, one that he would presently see through and understand;

But, all the while, that text was with him, and to the jar of the car he repeated for refrain a paraphrase of his own:

“How shall it damage a man if he lose his own soul and gain the whole world?”

How indeed? Surely he had tried. For three years the effort had been constant. It was because of it he had married, it was for this he had sought to throttle his child.

She wore long pink drawers of silk, and for girdle she had the blue buds of the lotus, which are symbols of virginity. She was young and exquisitely formed. In her face you read strange records, and on her lips were promises as rare.

Her eyes were tortoiseshell, her hair was black as guilt.

The prelude had ceased, the movement quickened. With a gesture of abandonment the girl threw her head back, and, her arms extended, she fluttered like a butterfly on a rose. She ran forward. The sambuca rang quicker, the harp quicker yet.

She threw herself to one side, then to the other, her hips swaying as she moved. The buds at her girdle fell one by one; she was dancing on flowers, her hips still swaying, her waist advancing and retreating to the shiver of the harp.

She was elusive as dream, subtle as love; she intoxicated and entranced;

and finally, as she threw herself on her hands, her feet, first in the air and then slowly descending, touched the ground, while her body straightened like a reed, there was a long growl of unsatisfied content.

“I am amazed—” he began.

“The beginning of truth is amazement. Wonder, then, at what you see; for he that wonders shall reign, and he that reigns shall rest.”

The music of his voice heightened the beauty of the speech. On Mary it fell and rested as had the touch of his hand.

Mary turned away and caught her forehead in her hands.

“If this is a penance,” she murmured, “what then are his rewards?”

On the floor of a little room Mary lay, her face to the ground. In her ears was the hideousness of a threat that had fastened on her abruptly like a cheetah in the dark. From below came the sound of banqueting.

Jesus straightened himself. With the weary indulgence of one to whom hearts are as books, he looked about him, then to the dome above.

“Whoever is without sin among you,” he declared, “may cast the first stone.”

When he looked again the crowd had slunk away. Only Ahulah remained, her head bowed on her bare white arm. From the lateral chamber the priest still peered, the carbuncle glistening on his lip.

“In Eternity there is room for everything,” she said, when he came to her again.

“Eternity is an abyss which the tomb uses for a sewer,” he answered.

“Its flood is corruption. The day only exists, but in it is that freedom which waves possess. Mary, if you would but taste it with me!

Mary mastered her revolt.

“Judas, the day will come when you will cease to speak as you do.”

“Yes, surely; and so do you.”

The green afternoon faded in the hemorrhages of the setting sun.

Twilight approached like a wolf. Night unfurled her great black fan;

the moon came, fumbling the shadows, checkering the underbrush with silver spots. Once a caravan passed, and once from the hillside came the bark of a dog, caught up and repeated in some farm beyond; otherwise the night was unstirred;

Mary interrupted him savagely:

“There are ten kinds of hypocrisy. You have nine of them; you will develop the tenth and invent a new one besides.”

At this Judas made a pass with his hands and stared absently at the ground. “Mary,” he said, “life is a book which man reads when he dies. During the last hour I have been unrolling it.

“It seems to me, my dear, that you take things with a high hand. It may be that you forget yourself.”

“I take them from where I am,” she cried.

“As for forgetfulness, remember that my grandfather was satrap of Syria, my father after him, while yours—”

Calcol shrugged his shoulders, and pointed to the palace.

“What the procurator has written he has written,”

he answered.

When Hugh looked up the trill trembled and ceased. Four eyes had met.

Hugh smiled, which was impertinent of him; the girl blushed, which was modest of her;

then an old man appeared, one who neither blushed nor smiled, who looked exceeding cross and shut the window with a bang.

Among our friends and acquaintances are always those who, to our knowledge, have sorrows of their own. But there are others that evolve a world, one that glows, subsides and dies away, unknown to any save themselves.

The solitudes of space appall, the solitudes of the heart can be as endless as they.

In those which Hugh concealed a universe had had its being and its subsistence—a universe with gem-like hopes for stars, one in which the sun had been so eager it had cast its rainbows in his eyes. But now it was all dispersed;

But this was natural. Not until her engagement was announced did society become aware of her existence. Born a Snaith, her people were believed to be rich and known to be common.

Her father was an old person of both sexes⁠—possessed of all the vices of woman and none of the virtues of man⁠—a Wall Street rat who told untenable stories and insisted on morning prayers.

His wife, it was rumored, was of better stock, and in reviewing the documents, it seems difficult for her not to have been. But she had little to boast of.

“

Drop it in the sewer, it will get to him in time,

” Jones answered, and began anew at Anderson’s wife.

“No, dear boy, permit me.

A woman is never led astray. She trots, or gallops or bolts astray, but never is she led.

Lovelace, Faust, Don Juan, rolled into one, are helpless where virtue is. Besides, in these days a man never makes the first advances, he hasn’t time. It is the woman, always the woman, who—”

“

Plenty, Mrs. Carol. Plenty. Some even with two.

”

And the greater the ability, the greater the abuse. It is the tribute that failure pays to success.

Mediocrity is never discussed, and, being unforgiving, resents it.

As for my books, if they please no one, doubtless they are poor, but if they pleased everybody I should consider them rot. Vox populi, vox stulti. The majority is always wrong. What would a Scotch and soda say to you?”

It was by candle that he dressed, and when at last he was able to set out for the steamship office his teeth chattered with the rawness of the air.

Hell is supposed to be hot, but fancy it cold, and there can not be a pin to choose between it and London in December.

The steamship office was in Cockspur Street, the throw of a stone beyond, but Nevius felt too numb and depressed to get there unfortified.

“Then you ought to be trampled under foot,” Nevius gnashed, and striding after him cried, “

In Hebrew there are four words for reptile, in my vocabulary there is but one⁠—Snaith.

”

On the whole, then, I may say that people in general are rather pleased than otherwise. There is a land where there is much joy over the sinner that repents.

In the world we live in the joy is at his detection.

”

“Bah!” And the novelist smiled complacently. “

Suicide is out of fashion, dear boy, and vulgar too.

Now listen to me. Tomorrow the Snaiths will probably let you into your house. From what you said in your note I suppose you will want servants. I will attend to that. Now get to bed.

The boy had come with the papers, but his coming and going passed unmarked. For an hour, that seemed a minute, Nevius sat wondering at his wife.

A man who suffers is never bored.

But what did the hall-boy want now? Mr. Harding, of the Chronicle, was below, was he? And Mr. Robinson, of the Despatch, and Mr. McGrath, of the Evening Star? Well, below, deeper down even, for all of him they might remain.

“What is that saying of Ingall’s?” he mused as he passed down the stair. “ ‘

It is just as well to let dynamite alone, particularly when it happens to be intelligent and has a grievance.

’ When Nevius understands what I do, he will kill that woman, and by George, when he does, for the first time in my life I shall want to be on the jury.”

“Yes,” Nevius answered. “Yes, to such an extent even that I have put him in my will.

Mr. Snaith is a member of the Society for the Protection of Animals, and in recognition of his affection for beasts, I have left him a mirror.

”

The why and wherefore of the divorce haunted him still. And as law was no longer possible, and his career at an end, he had a choice between drink and study. In the former he tried to drown that interrogation mark.

But the interrogation mark knew how to swim.

Then he plunged into history.

“A little eighteenth-century politesse of that kind is far better than big words and short phrases. Anything, Carol, anything but a row. I don’t wonder though that you look as if a scrap would be a revel.

Divorce is like matrimony, dear boy, a fellow has got to go through it three or four times before he knows how.

By the time this lady gets done, what an expert she will be! It is true she is exceptionally gifted, facile principessa, as one might say, but—now give that to me, I am ashamed of you.”

There are men who can’t say, “I don’t know.” It sounds too flat. Jones was one of them. Pontifically, in his deepest note, he replied, “

Mystery, dear boy, exists only in the dictionary. There is no such thing. But there is ignorance, and that is very fertile.

The less we know the more we believe. Now, if you want a guess—” and drawing Enever nearer he whispered in his ear.

It sounds too flat. Jones was one of them. Pontifically, in his deepest note, he replied, “Mystery, dear boy, exists only in the dictionary. There is no such thing. But there is ignorance, and that is very fertile.

The less we know the more we believe.

Now, if you want a guess—” and drawing Enever nearer he whispered in his ear.

“No; Monsieur de Parabole’s physiology of marriage. You know, do you not, that he is engaged to—” and Mrs. Manhattan, with a quiver of the eyelids, indicated the delicious vision. “That is what killed the Hottentot. The poor old thing knew what was going on.

A man may betray the woman who loves him, but never can he deceive her.

”

Nobody seems to recognize that the one to blame for her conduct is her father. Don Carlos is a most ordinary person. He goes about talking, ‘God and my country,’ by day, wrecking households at night, as ignorant of Molière as my masseur.

Evil exists only in the noise that it makes.

“ ‘Le scandale du monde est ce qui fait l’offense Et ce n’est pas pécher que pécher en silence.”

From avowals to action no appreciable time is required. In a moment they were in each other’s arms; in a week they were engaged; in a month they were married.

In fairyland lovers don’t dillydally.

It was not, though, of course, at Monte Carlo that the marriage took place. Against its taking place at all Mrs. Verelst protested vehemently.

Trella paid not the slightest attention to her. Seeing which, after another American fashion, Mrs. Verelst gave in. The marriage took place in Paris, and after the ceremony, through the scented streets, the bride and groom who had met in fairyland set out for paradise.

Love is a fever. Marriage is a febrifuge.

That is the rule. This marriage was not an exception. Only its antipyretic effects were not immediately observable.

As to that he was right.

To expect some women to tell the truth is as naive as to expect them to go about naked. They simply can’t.

Then, too, there are mysteries concerning them which we may determine to solve, but which if time but intervene we prefer to ignore. Wyvill’s attitude was, therefore, perfectly natural. But in upbraiding the lady he had been absurd.

As he read the note he could not but recall other explanations of which he had been cognizant. Yet, then, also, he could not but let them go.

Time is a strange emollient. In its mysterious potency it softens without our knowledge.

We are unaware that it has been acting on us, and suddenly a whisper, a breeze that passes, shows that it has done its work.

Yet there, even the worst have fits of propriety. Society abroad is very much the same as at home. It is not censorious.

Provided a woman lives, outwardly, at least, on good terms with her husband; provided, as Villiers had noted, that there is an avoidance of open scandal, a lady is free to be as unladylike as she likes.

With the men, at all times everything goes. Yet, now and then they do object to certain associations for their wives.

He raised his own hat. The duke raised his. There was a clamor, a scurry, a clearing of the track, a careering of thoroughbreds, a riot of color, a shout, the horses were off, the Prix was being run, and the incident forgot.

Truth is an objective phenomenon. It acts in us and on us like a chemical precipitate.

You may have given it no thought, and there it is revealed. That night, apropos to nothing, the incident returned to Wyvill.

Wyvill disowned it, disavowed it, would have none of it. But there it was. Presently the disavowals ceased.

In certain conditions we get used to monsters. The soul makes itself at home with what it must.

Wyvill was seated in the library. An hour previous Trella, pretexting some one or other of those many malaises which women always have within beck and call, had disappeared for the night.

Latterly these malaises and their coincidental disappearances had been frequent, and in considering them the dialogue overheard at the track returned, but freighted now with significance. The soul may accustom itself to what it must, but it will struggle first.

We believe less what we should than what we wish.

For relief from the obsession Wyvill got up. He would have gone to Trella. But, presumably, she was asleep.

Yes, but whose skirt?

Murder is painful, but a skirt is demulcent.

Whose skirt was it? The question, ping-ponged over the tea things, finally lost itself among them. No one knew anything about Ferrol’s clandestine affairs;

Tenets such as these are to the Occidental just so much nonsense.

But is it not, I reflected, a beneficent Providence that has enabled us to despise whatever we do not understand?

Then, too, may it not be that there are possibilities to which we are blind? May it not be that there are forces of which we know nothing, but which subtler intellects have grasped?

Once he passed her, but, of course, she did not look his way. He dropped behind, yet in the dropping there was not so much as the quiver of an eyelid to betoken a consciousness of his impertinence.

Women admire the brave when they do not prefer the audacious.

Harry recognized the beauty of the truth of that axiom, even though he omitted to formulate it. He wanted to be devilish. He longed to.

“What you need is a policeman,” the girl threw back. “Now go find one, and let me alone.”

Caress a panther, and it will not necessarily rend you.

The girl had shown her teeth. They were royal. But now from her voice the anger had gone. From her eyes the flash had subsided. Harry noted the change, and construed it properly. Château qui parle et femme qui écoute. From impudent he became resolute.

“

I am married to a woman who is not my wife.

”

“Then what in thunder are you talking about?”

Smoke is a sedative.

I hailed a steward, got a cigar, and proceeded to light it. Before the process was completed he was at me again.

Or, if divorce seemed circuitous, a slight shove from the bluff, a tarantula put nesting in her bed, and, without inconvenience, the thing was done. But anything of the kind was beyond peradventure, in addition to being absurd.

Men of the world do not kill an obnoxious wife. They find it simpler to detest her.

Moreover, such men as do murder their wives, do not first steal the lady’s jewels and then offer a reward for their own apprehension, another for the recovery of the gems.

Her features were dainty and delicate. Her hair was dark and she had mauve eyes, which, oblique and half closed, gave her an aspect faintly Chinese. Born a Kandy, and known generally as Sugar Candy, she quite lived up to the name.

Heat sugar and abruptly it boils.

Sally did boil, not long, and not effervescently, but with a sort of contained rage.

Is the lily fairer than the rose? Sally had the ephemeral charm of the former.

She was a book bound in muslin, with all the pages blank.

What time and fate would scrawl there, fate and time would tell. As yet they were white. As yet the girl was a lily. Mme. Oppensheim was the rose, large, colourful, majestic.

“Pay a man a million dollars to sleep with my daughter! Never!”

Never is a long word. Before the interview was concluded, she decided to do so.

“I am ruining myself,” she sobbed.

“Yes,” Welden replied. “I know. I, too, am afraid.”

“In any love affair there are always three. The third is the unknown. It is that which frightens.”

What he meant he could not have told. The remark, passably oracular, had but sprung into the sudden utterance, which, occasionally, prophecies take. Dismissed at the time in immediate embraces, afterward it was shudderingly recalled.

Le Hillel pocketed it. “Shall I see you tomorrow?”

There are morrows that never dawn. What is more notable, there are men who know they will not.

But Welden nodded and shortly, when the car stopped again at his hotel, he thanked Le Hillel, who whirled away.

It was at this juncture that Sally declared herself a miserable woman. In the opinion of the world she deserved to be.

The opinion of the world is very valuable.

The fried mixture of falsities on which it daily breakfasts would induce apoplexy in any entity less robust.

After the philistinism of the West, it was agreeable to be lodged in an artistic inn. After the horrors of a transcontinental trip, it was a pleasure to dress at ease. After the convict fare of the Limited, food properly served was a relief.

After a tragedy, a change of air is good for the nerves.

Welden, as he sat at table that evening, his recent mourning indicated in his shirt by two small black studs, considered momentarily these minor gifts of the minor gods.

Maud turned, surveying the room. Then, assured that they were quite alone, she disengaged her hands, put them on his shoulders and raising herself, whispered:

“What girl would refuse a man who loved her enough to kill another woman for her? Dearest, I adore you.”

Welden drew her to him. Presently, as he held her in his arms, he said: “I hope you destroyed that agreeable information?”

“

Nephews are so intolerant,

” Mr. Farquhar, with his usual calm, commented. “You see, my dearest, truth is not suited to everybody, nor, for that matter, are lies.”

“Nephews are so intolerant,” Mr. Farquhar, with his usual calm, commented.

“You see, my dearest, truth is not suited to everybody, nor, for that matter, are lies.”

At which his dearest smiled, and said:

At which his dearest smiled, and said:

“No, of course not; unless, like your own, they happen to be splendid.”

But though the outlines, and particularly the headlines, of the mystery were familiar enough to all, yet the deeper mystery that was behind it was not solved until later; and then generally resolved itself into the verdict that Kenneth Mar was cracked.

A man in love usually is a bit off.

In France, pathologists so ordinarily recognize the fact that they classify the condition as a disease induced by a fermentation of the molecules of the imagination. Assuming the diagnosis to be correct, necessarily there must exist a superinducing cause.

Absently, Converse nodded. “

It is human to lose in death those for whom we care. It is inhuman to lose them in life.

” He paused, looked grimly down, and determinedly up. “I can’t lose her, I shan’t, I won’t!”

At once Bundy accosted him. I could not hear what he said, but I could see the clergyman stop, raise his eyes, and look uncertainly at Bundy.

Worship has many forms, the devout have many attitudes, but perhaps the greatest grace that religion confers is serenity.

Momentarily, this gentleman appeared to lack it. But momentarily only. Immediately he straightened, stroked his rich hair, and murmured something.

“Not mine at all,” I was about to tell him, but he was so obviously preparing for action that, instead, I put a hand on his arm. “Don’t,” I admonished. “

The greatest revenge is the disdain of any.

”

“He is becoming lyrical,” I tormentedly reflected, and felt, if possible, more Johnsonian than before.

To be alone with a baby is bad, but to be alone with a bore is bitter.

For relief, I tried to pretend to myself that I was not there. I even succeeded, I think, for for a minute or two I lost him. When I caught up with him again he was playing another air:

but to certain temperaments the menace of moneyless matrimony is, perhaps, a febrifuge. Do you not agree with me?

Do you not agree, rather, that circumstances alter kisses?

”

And that fact, while it applies to Cullen, applies also to Janet. I was not with her, nor, poor child, was anyone with her when she got that infamous letter; yet had all the world been with her, she still would have been alone.

In the great crises of the soul, everyone is, and Janet was so thoroughly alone that she could not bear it.

When at last her brother found her, she had gone.”

“Where is Herbert, do you know?” she agitatedly asked.

To lie to a lady is never nice, yet tell the truth and sometimes it is not only the devil that you shame.

“No,” I answered with affected candor. With an equally assumed appearance of surprise, I added: “Don’t you?”

“Or rather I wish you were not my client at all. Yes, I do. It is not for me to go behind what you have told me. But it is clear that you are here to do, not the right thing, but the gentlemanly one.

The gentlemanly thing is the conventional thing, and all conventionality is cowardice.

”

Certainly I would, and if she were a good woman and cared for me, in time I would get it. All love is pity. On the other hand, if the devil tempted my wife, I would forgive her.

The one affection worth having is that which can, not only forgive, but console.

The majority think otherwise, but in all matters stupidity is very generally diffused. Personally on that score I have no cause for complaint. It is on general stupidity that we lawyers subsist.

The one affection worth having is that which can, not only forgive, but console. The majority think otherwise, but in all matters stupidity is very generally diffused. Personally on that score I have no cause for complaint.

It is on general stupidity that we lawyers subsist.

“In other words, you mean that I am an imbecile,” Wentworth again got in.

Tatum laughed. “Do you know, I have a room that I use for no other purpose.

Changing the mind is a cleanly habit and consequently hygienic.

”

Gordon’s smile deepened. “And precious few of them there are.

History is dull as ditch-water and ought to be brilliant as a ballet.

”

“

That is the most selfish wish in the world,

” Duncan replied.

“

I mean that when things do not go well, ignorant people always blame someone else, sensible people blame themselves and wise people blame nobody.

A wise man knows that whatever happens, happens because it had to happen and because it could not happen otherwise. Do you follow me?”

Duncan nodded at her. “I will put it more clearly then. We all make mistakes. You may have also made them. In that case I shall not blame you. On the contrary.

The only punishment a father should inflict is forgiveness.

”

Mrs. Vivian sniffed. “You had supper at twelve, I suppose, and you have been talking ever since.

But no man ever talks to a girl for three hours unless he keeps saying the same thing all the time.

”

“Well, in three months then. At your age that is the limit—that is matrimony.

Three months of adoration, three months of cogitation, thirty years of toleration, with the children to repeat the process.

I ought to know. You will too. You are your father all over—minus his brains.”

“Fredikins!” Mrs. Vivian with an enraptured air repeated. “Why that was his pet name when he was a baby! So amusing he was, too. Since then he has become very tedious.

But tedious men make such excellent husbands, and that brings me back to what I was talking about.

Why don’t you and he get married at once? If you will let me, I will give you the wedding.”

But Ketletas, his face flushed, threw at her: “

One might as well ask alms of a statue as affection from you.

”

“Then look at one, look hard and see that Mrs. Ketletas sees you at it. In cases of this kind there is nothing like jealousy on the part of the woman, particularly when complicated by indifference on the part of the man.

Indifference is very winning.

But men generally swear and stamp about. That is so human and therefore so artless that it heightens a lady in her own esteem and fortifies her in her attitude.

Cally laughed. “

People never die of fever. They die of idiots, of apothecaries, of imbeciles who call themselves M.D.’s.

But of fever—never!”

Cally put down the crop. “

It is a bountiful Providence that has enabled us to despise whatever we do not understand.

But to get back to our muttons, or rather to my bacilli. At some time or other every man has cause, or thinks he has cause, to complain of his wife.

“There, there!” Harry grandly threw in. “Assume a virtue though you have it not. In the Gospel of Matrimony it is written—or should be—

Blessed are they that ignore, for theirs is the Kingdom of Love.

”

“Yes, but men are queer and that’s the point—a point, too—that women such as you never understand. A man may like terrapin and canvasback. He can’t eat them every day.

A man requires variety in the menu. It is not his fault. Nature made him that kind of a brute.

”

“Supposing you were. Then, in that case, for heaven’s sake, don’t get hysterical and shriek for divorce.” By George! he thought, between us, Fred and I will gag her first. “No,” he resumed, “all that is such wretched form.

Decent people never make a fuss about anything.

”

Fred, who was removing a glove, looked him over. “

Never ask people where they have been. It’s not civil. If you are curious, ask where they are going.

”

with men and women whom you would recognize as first-nighters, with others whom you would not recognize at all.

For it is great sport to see a woman tried for her life.

Yet when you have known her, or known of her, what more could you decently ask, except to have her convicted? That she would be, everyone was convinced. The sight of her spectral face was enough.

Concerning the muscarin, toxicologists for the State swore that it leaves no traces. In rebuttal, toxicologists for the defense swore that it does. The usual jest circulated.

The mendacious were subdivided into liars, damned liars, and expert witnesses.

Meanwhile it was shown that reagents employed at the autopsy had determined slight discolorations, which, it was also shown, might be attributed as well to natural causes as the reverse. Between the two you could pick and choose. It was a great privilege.

“

Mr. Ferrol was a gentleman.

”

“

You are seeking to take my life, but my soul you cannot take, nor shall I reveal it to you.

”

“Ferrol was not a lunatic. No man with a creative mind ever is.

The genius is normal. It is the ordinary individual, with his stupid thoughts and uncreative mind, that is abnormal.

Ferrol was a genius. He had hit on a process by which electricity can turn lead into gold. You may doubt it;

“Were you in court when the verdict was rendered? You were not? Then you missed an instructive moment. Janet crumpled and fell. She had fainted.

Innocent people don’t faint when they are acquitted. They expect acquittal.

It is relief at the unexpected that crumples the guilty up. Only a moment before she had determined to kill herself. It was afterward that I learned of it.”

The sudden query was like the point of a rapier, and Jones backed from before it. Yet immediately, and in spite, too, of the six-shooter on the floor, he felt that whatever else may have happened, the possibility which the question evoked was absurd.

Even Bluebeards no longer slaughter their wives. They perhaps find it simpler to love them.

That view—the optimism of which he later revised—steadied him. Lightly he was about to reply that he had killed any number of people in cold ink; but, judging the lightness ill-timed, instead he asked for a match.

“Few of us can tell in advance how we should act in any emergency.

We may think we know, but that is because we don’t realize that we are apt to change our ideas about everything⁠—except the high opinion which we have of ourselves.

”

I can remember that I would laugh for no reason, and yet what better reason could there be? But the laughter ceased, the exhilaration passed, the hosannas died in my throat. I had thought paradise so neighborly.

The bitterest lesson of life is that always it lies just beyond!

”

“

Don’t think⁠—act! Action is thought in motion.

You have asked me what, in your circumstances, I would have a character in fiction do. Ordinarily it would cost you one fifty to discover.

“To you—yes. You’re a physician—therefore, a materialist. You believe, as brutes do, only in the reality of things. And yet, as a physician, you ought to recognize the potentialities of the pineal gland.

They have taken me to strange places; they have shown me strange things.

I can no more prove it to you than I can dazzle a blind man.

“If you’re trying to alarm me, you’ll hardly succeed.

Only the unevolved fear death. What they should fear is life.

”

And it may be that, because of some forgotten sin committed in an unremembered life, this mask was his punishment. Otherwise he was free—apparently, that is, for actually he was chained. Hoops stronger than steel bound him to Camille. He loved her.

Fancy a worm in love with a star!

But fancy, too, common sense on the part of the worm, and the latter will know that the star is out of reach. Mike needed no one to tell him that. A mirror can be very instructive.

He loved her. Fancy a worm in love with a star! But fancy, too, common sense on the part of the worm, and the latter will know that the star is out of reach. Mike needed no one to tell him that.

A mirror can be very instructive.

Now, as he entered the room, Glendenning turned, scowled, and, precisely as if he were eating ice, addressed him.

“What is that? A Medical Record? Mike! You’re not going to be a physician, are you?

A physician in the family is so reassuring. Just like a fire escape.

”

Usually at that hour she dined, having dressed beforehand. But on this evening, after returning from a run with a chum, Kate Delafield, she had been waylaid by the cook, then by Glendenning, finally by Mike, and she had had no time to change.

She was none the less hungry and she went back into the dining room

, which, situated in an extension, was in a measure separated from the rest of the house. There the lights were on, the table was set. On a sideboard was bread, fruit, a salad, a decanter of claret, a brace of cold partridges;

“No,” Glendenning repeated. “Don’t say it.

Changing the mind is cleanly and therefore hygienic.

My departed uncle had a room that he used for no other purpose.”

With the stranger, she had felt at home. This man, whom she had never seen before, had made her want to see him again. It was very extraordinary.

Love at first sight always is.

Of the presence of that psychosis she was unaware. If she had been and had been cross-questioned regarding it, she certainly would not have blushed herself to death, but quite as certainly she would have lied.