“Sardanapalus builded seven cities in a day. Let us eat, drink and sleep, for tomorrow we die.”...

To Borys & Christina...

“Ideas,” she said. “Oh, as for ideas⁠—” “Well?” I hazarded, “as for ideas⁠—?” We went through the old gateway and I cast a glance over my shoulder. The noon sun was shining over the masonry, over the ...

Her figure faded into the darkness, as pale things waver down into deep water, and as soon as she disappeared my sense of humour returned. The episode appeared more clearly, as a flirtation with an en...

To encourage me, I suppose, Callan gave me the proof-sheets of his next to read in bed. The thing was so bad that it nearly sickened me of him and his jobs. I tried to read the stuff; to read it consc...

I went up to town bearing the Callan article, and a letter of warm commendation from Callan to Fox. I had been very docile; had accepted emendations; had lavished praise, had been unctuous and yet had...

I had gone out into the blackness of the night with a firmer step, with a new assurance. I had had my interview, the thing was definitely settled; the first thing in my life that had ever been definit...

It was Saturday and, as was his custom during the session, the Foreign Secretary had gone for privacy and rest till Monday to a small country house he had within easy reach of town. I went down with a...

I succeeded in giving Fox what his journal wanted; I got the atmosphere of Churchill and his house, in a way that satisfied the people for whom it was meant. His house was a pleasant enough place, of ...

After that I began to live, as one lives; and for forty-nine weeks. I know it was forty-nine, because I got fifty-two atmospheres in all; Callan’s and Churchill’s, and those forty-nine and the last on...

I had a pretty bad night after that, and was not much in the mood for Fox on the morrow. The sight of her had dwarfed everything; the thought of her disgusted me with everything, made me out of concei...

Before noon of the next day I was ascending the stairs of the new house in which the Duc had his hermitage. There was an air of secrecy in the broad publicity of the carpeted stairs that led to his fl...

I couldn’t get to sleep that night, but lay and tossed, lit my candle and read, and so on, forever and ever⁠—for an eternity. I was confoundedly excited; there were a hundred things to be thought abou...

I was at the Hôtel de Luynes⁠—or Granger⁠—early on the following morning. The mists were still hanging about the dismal upper windows of the inscrutable Faubourg; the toilet of the city was being comp...

I had a sense of walking very fast⁠—almost of taking flight⁠—down a long dim corridor, and of a door that opened into an immense room. All that I remember of it, as I saw it then, was a number of past...

That afternoon we had a scene, and late that night another. The memory of the former is a little blotted out. Things began to move so quickly that, try as I will to arrange their sequence in my mind, ...

We parted in London next day, I hardly know where. She seemed so part of my being, was for me so little more than an intellectual force, so little of a physical personality, that I cannot remember whe...

We reached London somewhat late in the evening⁠—in the twilight of a summer day. There was the hurry and bustle of arrival, a hurry and bustle that changed the tenor of my thoughts and broke their tra...

At noon of the next day I gave Fox his look in at his own flat. He was stretched upon a sofa⁠—it was evident that I was to take such of his duties as were takeable. He greeted me with words to that ef...

I walked along, got to my club and upstairs into my room peaceably. A feeling of entire tranquillity had come over me. I rested after a strife which had issued in a victory whose meaning was too great...

I wanted to see her, to finish it one way or another, and, at my aunt’s house, I found her standing in an immense white room; waiting for me. There was a profusion of light. It left her absolutely sha...