The Long Lane's Turning

ayed gently in the air and from the acacia trees on the lawn he could hear the sleepy twitter of an oriole. He turned off the light and went into the hall. There at one side stood the white,

might have dwelt at opposite ends of the Milky Way, and it seemed to him suddenly monstrous, wha

e lower hall a place of ghostly shadows. He re-entered the library, moved to the table and turned on the reading-lamp. Then, lifti

t Charlotte's! My blood gave you that curve of brow and those full lips and that de

is life too late! He thought of their meetings, few enough, indeed. How often he had wondered how life would have turned for him, if at the end she had listened to his desperate pleading, and gone with him along that alluring way that had drawn him like an opal path

it of Echo, in her splendid youth and

it and bowed his head upon them. "You were right, Eleanor,

d leaf of paper-a page closely written over in twirly, dim writing. He lifted it up and held it

cannot destroy it. You knew I would not-could not--let you do what you beg me to! Never, never!

ed twenty years before, and the hand-writing, how familiar! He laid the leaf flat in the lamp-light and read it through, with e

t stick to the rules. To think of overstepping that boundary, in such a desperate fashion, gives my fastidious sense a strange recoil-something like that curious shame and confusion that associates itself with a dream in which one fin

tly as though the writer had lai

t of his ken, save to the thriving memory! For how long the hand that had penned those lines had been dust, yet the poor symbols of ink and pa

t every projecting portion of the ornamentation. With a thin, metal paper-knife he explored each warp and crevice. But his search was fruitl

an overpowering meaning in a circumstance in itself banal and trivial. Something of her proud and passionate spirit she had etched into those

at. If you hadn't you wouldn't have left me this desk when you-di

big chair, sat down, with the shee

door and when there was no answer, opened it softly and

!" he ex

gnity which she had made her own. She came and sat down on the edge of the bed and he caugh

he whispered. "You-you know what he dis

id. "But I can't always be giving an imita

e said. "I-for my sake, I wi

'll mind my p's and q's. But you must go b

him on the forehead befor