“Look not for roses in Attalus his garden, or wholesome flowers in a venomous plantation. And since there is scarce any one bad, but some others are the worse for him; tempt not contagion by proximity...

The churchyard in which Arthur Lawford found himself wandering that mild and golden September afternoon was old, green, and refreshingly still. The silence in which it lay seemed as keen and mellow as...

But the coolness and deliberation of his scrutiny, had to a certain extent calmed Lawford’s mind and given him confidence. Hitherto he had met the little difficulties of life only to vanquish them wit...

Mr. Bethany sat awaiting them in the dining-room, a large, heavily-furnished room with a great benign looking-glass on the mantelpiece, a marble clock, and with rich old damask curtains. Fleecy silver...

One solitary and tall candle burned on the great dressing-table. Faint, solitary pictures broke the blankness of each wall. The carpet was rich, the bed impressive, and the basins on the washstand as ...

It was but a little after daybreak when Mrs. Lawford, after listening at his door a while, turned the key and looked in on her husband. Blue-grey light from between the venetian blinds just dusked the...

There were three books in the room⁠—Jeremy Taylor’s “Holy Living and Dying,” a volume of the Quiver, and a little gilded book on wildflowers. He read in vain. He lay and listened to the uproar of his ...

Her husband turned wearily once more, and drawing up a chair sat down in front of the cold grate. He realised that Sheila thought him as much of a fool now as she had for the moment thought him an imp...

The Sabbath, pale with September sunshine, and monotonous with chiming bells, had passed languidly away. Dr. Simon had come and gone, optimistic and urbane, yet with a faint inward dissatisfaction ove...

The last light of sunset lay in the west; and a sullen wrack of cloud was mounting into the windless sky when Lawford entered the country graveyard again by its dark weatherworn lychgate. The old ston...

Lawford listened awhile before opening his door. He heard voices in the dining-room. A light shone faintly between the blinds of his bedroom. He very gently let himself in, and unheard, unseen, mounte...

Lawford slept far into the cloudy Monday morning, to wake steeped in sleep, lethargic, and fretfully haunted by inconclusive remembrances of the night before. When Sheila, with obvious and capacious c...

“What’s in a name?” laughed Herbert. “But it really is a queer show-up of human oddity. A fellow comes in here, searching; that’s all.” His back was turned, as he stood staring absently out, sipping h...

The door opened. Lawford rose, and into the further rays of the candlelight entered a rather slim figure in a light summer gown. “Just home?” said Herbert. “We’ve been for a walk⁠—” “My sister always ...

Sheila, calm, alert, reserved, was sitting at the open window when he awoke again. His breakfast tray stood on a little table beside the bed. He raised himself on his elbow and looked at his wife. The...

Raying and gleaming in the sunlight the hired landau drove up to the gate. Lawford, peeping between the blinds, looked down on the coachman, with reins hanging loosely from his red squat-thumbed hand,...

The first faint streaks of dawn were silvering across the stars when Lawford again let himself into his deserted house. He stumbled down to the pantry and cut himself a crust of bread and cheese, and ...

There was no one in the room, and no light, when they entered. For a moment Grisel stood by the open window, looking out. Then she turned impulsively. “My brother, of course, will ask you too,” she sa...

A quiet knocking aroused him in the long, tranquil bedroom; and Herbert’s head was poked into the room. “There’s a bath behind that door over there,” he whispered, “or if you like I’m off for a bathe ...

Herbert himself went down to order the governess cart, and packed them in with a rug. And in the dusk Grisel set Lawford down at the corner of his road and drove on to an old bookseller’s with a commi...

It was a quiet supper the three friends sat down to. Herbert sat narrowing his eyes over his thoughts, which, when the fancy took him, he scattered out upon the others’ silence. Lawford apparently had...

She came out into the sunlight, and they went through the little gate together. She walked quickly, without speaking, over the bridge, past a little cottage whose hollyhocks leaned fading above its lo...

He was utterly wearied, but he walked on for a long while with a dogged unglancing pertinacity and without looking behind him. Then he rested under the dew-sodden hedgeside and buried his face in his ...

Lawford sat on in the darkness, and now one sentence and now another of their talk would repeat itself in his memory, in much the same way as one listlessly turns over an antiquated diary, to read her...