To Louisa Nelson “At me ab amore tuo diducet nulla senectus.”...

Much has been written critically about Felix Kennaston since the disappearance of his singular personality from the field of contemporary writers; and Mr. Froser’s Biography contains all it is necessa...

Much has been written critically about Felix Kennaston since the disappearance of his singular personality from the field of contemporary writers; and Mr. Froser’s Biography contains all it is necessa...

The tale tells how Count Emmerick planned a notable marriage-feast for his sister La Beale Ettarre and Sir Guiron des Rocques. The tale relates that, in honor of this wedding, came from Nacumera, far ...

Horvendile peered out over broad rolling uplands.⁠ ⁠… He viewed a noble country, good to live in, rich with grain and metal, embowered with tall forests, and watered by pleasant streams. Walled cities...

Horvendile left the fortress, and came presently to Maugis d’Aigremont. Horvendile got speech with this brigand where he waited encamped in the hill-country of Perdigon, loth to leave Storisende since...

It was deep silent night when Horvendile came into the room where Ettarre slept. “Out, out!” cried Horvendile. “Let us have more light here, so that men may see the beauty men die for!” He went with a...

Maugis came forward, his eyes fixed hungrily upon Ettarre. “So a long struggle ends,” he said, very quiet. “There is no virtue left, Ettarre, save patience.” “While life remains I shall not cease to s...

“My love, Ettarre, they have not harmed you?” “None has harmed me, Guiron. Oh, and you?” “Maugis is dead,” he answered joyously. “See, here he lies, slain by brave Horvendile. And the rogues who follo...

Thus he walked in twilight, regretful that he must return to his own country, and live another life, and bear another name than that of Horvendile.⁠ ⁠… It was droll that in his own country folk should...

Thus he walked in twilight, regretful that he must return to his own country, and live another life, and bear another name than that of Horvendile.⁠ ⁠… It was droll that in his own country folk should...

Kennaston was to recall, also, that on this evening he dined alone with his wife, sharing a taciturn meal. He and Kathleen talked of very little, now, save the existent day’s small happenings, such as...

Felix Kennaston did not write very long that night. He fell idly to the droll familiar wondering how this dull fellow seated here in this luxurious room could actually be Felix Kennaston.⁠ ⁠… He was g...

As she came toward him through the fog, “How annoying it is,” she was saying plaintively, “that these moors are never properly lighted.” “Ah, but you must not blame Ole-Luk-Oie,” he protested. “It is ...

So Kennaston preserved this bit of metal. “No fool like an old fool,” his common-sense testily assured him. But Felix Kennaston’s life was rather barren of interests nowadays.⁠ ⁠… He thought no more o...

So Felix Kennaston saw his dream vulgarized, made a low byword; and he contemplated this travestying, as the cream of a sardonic jest, with urbanity. Indeed, that hour of notoriety seemed not without ...

Shortly afterward befell a queer incident. Kennaston, passing through a famed city, lunched with a personage who had been pleased to admire Men Who Loved Alison, and whose remunerative admiration had ...

“Madam,” he was insanely stating, “I would not for the world set up as a fit exponent for the mottoes of a copybook; but I am not all base.” “You are,” flashed she, “a notorious rogue.” It was quite d...

He was looking down at the most repulsive old woman he had ever seen. Hers was the abhorrent fatness of a spider; her flesh appeared to have the coloring and consistency of dough. She sat upon the sto...

He was looking down at the most repulsive old woman he had ever seen. Hers was the abhorrent fatness of a spider; her flesh appeared to have the coloring and consistency of dough. She sat upon the sto...

It proved that this was indeed a part of the sigil’s wonder-working: Kennaston learned by experience that whenever, even by accident, he was about to touch Ettarre his dream would end like a burst bub...

The diurnal part of Kennaston’s life was largely devoted to writing The Tinctured Veil⁠—that amazing performance which he subsequently gave to a bewildered world. And for the rest, his waking life wen...

There was no continuity in these dreams save that Ettarre was in each of them. A dream would usually begin with some lightheaded topsyturviness, as when Kennaston found himself gazing forlornly down a...

A little by a little he was beginning to lose interest in that pudgy pasty man of forty-odd who was called Felix Kennaston, and to handle his affairs more slackly. Once or twice Kennaston caught his w...

Nightly he went adventuring with Ettarre: and they saw the cities and manners of many men, to an extent undreamed-of by Ithaca’s mundivagant king; and among them even those three persons who had most ...

He seemed, indeed, to find food for wonder everywhere. It was as if he had awakened from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it ...

As has been said, Kennaston read much curious matter in his dead uncle’s library.⁠ ⁠… But most books⁠—even Felix Kennaston’s own little books⁠—did not seem now to be affairs of heavy moment. Once abed...

As has been said, Kennaston read much curious matter in his dead uncle’s library.⁠ ⁠… But most books⁠—even Felix Kennaston’s own little books⁠—did not seem now to be affairs of heavy moment. Once abed...

Then Kennaston was in Alexandria when John the Grammarian pleaded with the victorious Arabian general Amrou to spare the royal library, the sole repository at this period of many of the masterworks of...

Then again Kennaston stood in a stonewalled apartment, like a cell, wherein there was a furnace and much wreckage. A contemplative friar was regarding the disorder about him with disapproval, the whil...

These ironies Kennaston witnessed among many others, as he read in this or that chance-opened page from the past. Everywhere, it seemed to him, men had labored blindly, at flat odds with rationality, ...

But, much as man’s religion looked to a more ordered and symmetrical existence tomorrow, just so, upon another scale, man’s daily life seemed a continuous looking-forward to a terrestrial tomorrow. Ke...

Through such airdrawn surmises, then, as I have just recorded did Felix Kennaston enter at last into that belief which is man’s noblest heritage.⁠ ⁠… “Or I would put it, rather, that belief is man’s m...

So much for what Kennaston termed his “serious reading” in chance-opened pages of the past. There were other dreams quite different in nature, which seemed, rather, to fulfil the function of romantic ...

So much for what Kennaston termed his “serious reading” in chance-opened pages of the past. There were other dreams quite different in nature, which seemed, rather, to fulfil the function of romantic ...

So Kennaston seemed to have got only disappointment and vexation and gainless vague regret from his love-affairs in the flesh; and all fleshly passion seemed to flicker out inevitably, however splendi...

To Kennaston the Lord Protector was saying, with grave unction: “You will, I doubt not, fittingly express to our friends in Virginia, Master Major, those hearty sentiments which I have in the way of g...

“What fun!” says Kennaston; “we are at Vaux-le-Vicomte, where Fouquet is entertaining young Louis Quatorze. Yonder is La Vallière⁠—the thin towheaded girl, with the big mouth. People are just beginnin...

They waited in a big dark room of the Conciergerie, with many other condemned émigrants, until the tumbrils should come to fetch them to the Place de la Révolution. They stood beneath a narrow barred ...

Then again Kennaston stood alone before a tall window, made up of many lozenge-shaped panes of clear glass set in lead framework. He had put aside one of the two great curtains⁠—of a very fine stuff l...

Meanwhile, I used to see Kennaston nearly every day.⁠ ⁠… Looking back, I recollect one afternoon when the Kennastons were calling on us. It was the usual sort of late-afternoon call customarily exchan...

Such as has been described was now Felix Kennaston’s manner of living, which, as touches utilitarian ends, it might be wiser forthwith to dismiss as bred by the sickly fancies of an idle man bemused w...

Such as has been described was now Felix Kennaston’s manner of living, which, as touches utilitarian ends, it might be wiser forthwith to dismiss as bred by the sickly fancies of an idle man bemused w...

Then Kennaston went for a meditative walk in the abating glare of that day’s portentous sunset, wherein the tree-trunks westward showed like the black bars of a grate. It was in just such a twilight t...

Kathleen was seated at the dressing-table, arranging her hair, when Kennaston came again into her rooms. He went forward, and without speaking, laid one hand upon each shoulder. Now for an instant the...

He read The Tinctured Veil in print, with curious wistful wonder. “How did I come to write it?” was his thought. Thereafter Felix Kennaston, as the world knows, wrote no more books, save to collect hi...

With the preceding preachment I wish I might end the story. For what follows⁠—which is my own little part in the story of Felix Kennaston⁠—is that discomfortable sort of anticlimax wherein the key to ...