When the clergyman had gone, the bride turned. Before her was an open window before which was the open sea. In the air was a tropical languor, a savour of brine, the scent of lilies, the sound of mand...

In Paris, many moons later, an Englishman, Howard Tempest, looked in, at the Opéra, on his cousin, Camille de Joyeuse. This lady, connected by birth with Britannia’s best, and, through her husband, wi...

It was in circumstances which, if not dramatic, were, at least, uncommon, that Leilah Verplank met Barouffski. At Los Angeles, after her flight from Coronado, she caught an express that would have tak...

With the unerring instinct of the man of the world, Verplank, on entering the crowded salon, divined immediately, among all the women present, the hostess whom he had never seen. As he bent over her h...

“There are too many of us,” Verplank, the day following, found himself saying to Silverstairs. The two men were lunching at Voisin’s. The charming resort which, since the passing of Véry, of Véfour an...

That morning Leilah had two appointments, one with a modiste, the other with Violet Silverstairs. She did not feel equal to either. The episode of the previous evening had been to her like the supreme...

It was on the morning succeeding these incidents that Leilah felt unequal for the appointments she had made. But however she felt, she always did what she had planned. In this instance nature punished...

On alighting at the perron, Leilah had as always to endure the ceremonial of two footmen assiduously assisting her. “Emmanuel,” she said to one of them. “Is Monsieur Barouffski at home?” “No, madame l...

“The strawberries were delicious,” Violet, the following day, remarked to Leilah. The two women were seated in the garden of the house in the Rue de la Pompe. It was just after luncheon and between th...

“Gracious!” Violet exclaimed. She had been smoking and now in putting a cigarette in a cendrier she had succeeded in overturning it. Undismayed she looked at a clock. “Gracious!” she repeated. “Since ...

In the golden half light of the Opéra, a chorus, soprano voices on one side of the stage alternating with contralto on the other, vaporised the subtle sensuality of the scene. Violet Silverstairs, tur...

At the glass door, which a chasseur opened, Barouffski stopped, spoke to the man, gave him an order. As the others, conducted by a maître d’hôtel, approached a table, a fat woman in a pulpit charged t...

The next day, Violet, entering the brilliant room, gazed first about it and then at Leilah. “Aurelia is not here? That’s odd. She is simply horrid but so reliable. You don’t mind my having told her to...