Midway of the Ponte Vecchio at Florence, where three arches break the lines of the little jewellers’ booths glittering on either hand, and open an approach to the parapet, Colville lounged against the...

Colville had readied this point in that sarcastic study of his own condition of mind for the advantage of his late readers in the Post-Democrat-Republican, when he was aware of a polite rustling of dr...

Twenty years earlier, when Mrs. Bowen was Miss Lina Ridgely, she used to be the friend and confidante of the girl who jilted Colville. They were then both so young that they could scarcely have been a...

Miss Graham did, indeed, somehow diminish in the nearer perspective. She ceased to be overwhelming. When Colville lifted his eyes from bowing before her he perceived that she was neither so very tall ...

Colville fell asleep with the flattered sense which abounds in the heart of a young man after his first successful evening in society, but which can visit maturer life only upon some such conditions o...

It was so long since Colville had been at a dancing party that Mrs. Bowen’s offer to take him to Madame Uccelli’s had first struck his sense of the ludicrous. Then it had begun to flatter him; it impl...

The next morning’s sunshine dispersed the black mood of the night before; but enough of Colville’s self-disgust remained to determine him not to let his return to Florence be altogether vain, or his s...

In that still air of the Florentine winter, time seems to share the arrest of the natural forces, the repose of the elements. The pale blue sky is frequently overcast, and it rains two days out of fiv...

The next morning Paolo, when he brought up Colville’s breakfast, brought the news that there was to be a veglione at the Pergola Theatre. This news revived Colville’s courage. “Paolo,” he said, “you o...

Colville went to Palazzo Pinti next day with the feeling that he was defying Mrs. Bowen. Upon a review of the facts he could not find himself so very much to blame for the occurrences of the night bef...

Colville had not done what he meant in going to Mrs. Bowen’s; in fact, he had done just what he had not meant to do, as he distinctly perceived in coming away. It was then that in a luminous retrospec...

In his room Colville was devouring as best he might the chagrin with which he had come away from Palazzo Pinti, while he packed his trunk for departure. Now that the thing was over, the worst was past...

Mrs. Bowen sat before the hearth in her salon, with her hands fallen in her lap. At thirty-eight the emotions engrave themselves more deeply in the face than they do in our first youth, or than they w...

When he entered the beautiful old garden, its benison of peace fell upon his tumult, and he began to breathe a freer air, reverting to his purpose to be gone in the morning and resting in it, as he st...

Mrs. Bowen came in to them, looking pale and pain-worn, as she did that evening when she would not let Colville go away with the other tea-taking callers to whom she had made her headache an excuse. T...

When Colville came in the morning, Mrs. Bowen received him. They shook hands, and their eyes met in the intercepting glance of the night before. “Imogene will be here in a moment,” she said, with a na...

In the ensuing fortnight a great many gaieties besides the Egyptian ball took place, and Colville went wherever he and Imogene were both invited. He declined the quiet dinners which he liked, and whic...

The young clergyman whom Colville saw talking to Imogene on his first evening at Mrs. Bowen’s had come back from Rome, where he had been spending a month or two, and they began to meet at Palazzo Pint...

The next time Colville came he found himself alone with Imogene, who asked him what he had been doing all day. “Oh, living along till evening. What have you?” She did not answer at once, nor praise hi...

In the morning Mrs. Bowen received a note from her banker covering a despatch by cable from America. It was from Imogene’s mother; it acknowledged the letters they had written, and announced that she ...

When Colville came to himself his first sensation was delight in the softness and smoothness of the turf on which he lay. Then the strange colour of the grass commended itself to his notice, and prese...

Colville got himself out of the comfort and quiet of Mrs. Bowen’s house as soon as he could. He made the more haste because he felt that if he could have remained with the smallest trace of self-respe...

Colville went back to his own room, and spent a good deal of time in the contemplation of a suit of clothes, adapted to the season, which had been sent home from the tailor’s just before Mr. Waters ca...

In the levities which the most undeserving husbands permit themselves with the severest of wives, there were times after their marriage when Colville accused Lina of never really intending to drive hi...