The Real Adventure
By Webster, Henry Kitchell
Classic work by Webster, Henry Kitchell.
Table of Contents
LOVE AND THE WORLD I The Princess Cinderella II The First Question and an Answer to It III Where Did Rose Come In IV Long Circuits and Short V Rodney Smiled VI ...
THE WORLD ALONE I The Length of a Thousand Yards II The Evening and the Morning Were the First Day III Rose Keeps the Path IV The Girl With the Bad Voice V Mrs....
THE REAL ADVENTURE I The Tune Changes II A Broken Parallel III Friends IV Couleur-de-rose V The Beginning BOOK ONE The Great Illusion...
A POINT OF DEPARTURE "Indeed," continued the professor, glancing demurely down at his notes, "if one were the editor of a column of--er advice to young girls, such as I believe is...
BEGINNING AN ADVENTURE It was after five o'clock when, at the conclusion of the game and a cold shower, a rub and a somewhat casual resumption of her clothes, she emerged from the...
FREDERICA'S PLAN AND WHAT HAPPENED TO IT At twenty minutes after seven that evening, Frederica Whitney was about as nearly dressed as she usually was ten minutes before the hour a...
ROSALIND STANTON DOESN'T DISAPPEAR Rodney found a pipe of his that he kept concealed on the premises, loaded and lighted it, sat down astride a spindling little chair that looked ...
THE SECOND ENCOUNTER Portia Stanton was late for lunch; so, after stripping off her jacket and gloves, rolling up her veil and scowling at herself in an oblong mahogany-framed mir...
THE BIG HORSE "It's too ridiculous," she said. "Since last night, when I got to thinking how I must have looked, wrestling with that conductor, I've been telling myself that if I ...
HOW IT STRUCK PORTIA It was just a fortnight later that Rose told her mother she was going to marry Rodney Aldrich, thereby giving that lady a greater shock of surprise than, hith...
RODNEY'S EXPERIMENT The wedding was set for the first week in June. And the decision, instantly acquiesced in by everybody, was that it was to be as quiet--as strictly a family af...
AFTER BREAKFAST For their honeymoon, Martin had loaned them his camp up in northern Wisconsin--uncut forest mostly, with a river and a lot of little lakes in it. There were still ...
THE PRINCESS CINDERELLA When the society editor of "America's foremost newspaper," as in its trademark it proclaims itself to be, announced that the Rodney Aldriches had taken the...
THE FIRST QUESTION AND AN ANSWER TO IT But within a day or two, when a conversation overheard at a luncheon table recalled the architect to her mind, a rather perplexing question ...
WHERE DID ROSE COME IN However, it was one thing to decide that this was so, and quite another thing to dismiss the preposterous idea from her mind. There was still an hour before...
LONG CIRCUITS AND SHORT James Randolph was a native Chicagoan, but his father, an intelligent and prosperous physician, with a general practise in one of the northern suburbs, aft...
RODNEY SMILED It was with a reminiscent smile that Rose sat down before her telephone the next morning and called a number from memory. Less than a year ago, it had been such a th...
THE DAMASCUS ROAD It argued no real lack of sisterly affection that Rose didn't want to see Portia that morning. Even if there had been no other reason, being found in bed at half...
HOW THE PATTERN WAS CUT Through the two weeks that intervened before Portia and her mother left for the West, Rose disregarded the physical wretchedness--which went on getting wor...
A BIRTHDAY Rodney heard young Craig, who deviled up law for him, saying good night to the stenographer; glanced at his watch and opened the door to his outer office. "You may go ...
A DEFEAT The gown that Rodney had spoken of apologetically to the Lakes as a coronation robe, was put away; the maid was sent to bed. Rose, huddled into a big quilted bath-robe, a...
THE DOOR THAT WAS TO OPEN She would have to wait. Accepted, root and branch, as Rose was forced by her husband's attitude to accept it, a conclusion of that sort can be a wonderfu...
AN ILLUSTRATION So far as externals went, her life, that spring, was immensely simplified. The social demands on her, which had been so insistent all winter, stopped almost automa...
WHAT HARRIET DID She must wait for her miracle. As the weeks and months wore away, and as the season of violent and high-frequency alternations between summer and winter, which th...
FATE PLAYS A JOKE Traveling bars flowing along parallel, black and white; the white ones incandescent;--and a small helpless harried thing struggling to keep in the shadow of the ...
THE DAM GIVES WAY She began getting her strength back very fast after the next two or three days, but this queer kink in her emotions didn't straighten out. She came to see that i...
THE ONLY REMEDY The sudden flaw of passion that had troubled the waters of Rodney's soul, subsided, spent itself in mutterings, explanations, tending to become at last rather apol...
ROSE OPENS THE DOOR The struggle between them lasted a week--a ghastly week, during which, as far as the surface of things showed, their life flowed along in its accustomed channe...
THE LENGTH OF A THOUSAND YARDS "Here's the first week's rent then," said Rose, handing the landlady three dollars, "and I think you'd better give me a receipt showing till when it...
THE EVENING AND THE MORNING WERE THE FIRST DAY With her umbrella over her shoulder, Rose set sail northward again through the rain, absurdly cheered; first by the fact that the op...
ROSE KEEPS THE PATH Rose rehearsed twice a day for a solid week without forming the faintest conception of who "the girl" was or why she was "the girl up-stairs." She didn't know ...
had called it. Of course the thing that had got Rose was the echo, through everything John Galbraith had said, of Rodney's own philosophy; his dear, big, lusty, rather remorseless...
THE GIRL WITH THE BAD VOICE The Girl Up-stairs had quite a miscellaneous lot of plot; indeed a plot fancier might have detected nearly all the famous strains in its lineage. Its f...
MRS. GOLDSMITH'S TASTE If there was a profession in the world which Rose had never either idly or seriously considered as a possible one for herself, that of a teacher was it. And...
A BUSINESS PROPOSITION "Why, this was what I wanted to say," said Rose, taking up the broken conversation as he pulled the shop door to behind him. She didn't go out on to the sid...
THE END OF A FIXED IDEA She couldn't of course have missed a thing as plain as that but for a complete preoccupation of thought and feeling that would have left her oblivious to a...
SUCCESS--AND A RECOGNITION There is a kaleidoscopic character about the events of the ten days or so preceding the opening performance of most musical comedies which would make a ...
THE MAN AND THE DIRECTOR He said, "I want a talk with you," and she, thinking he meant then and there, glanced about for a corner where they'd be tolerably secure against the char...
THE VOICE OF THE WORLD If you were to accost the average layman, especially the layman who has, at one time or another, found his personal affairs, or those of his friends, casual...
THE SHORT CIRCUIT AGAIN It was, after all, out of that limbo that Jimmy had spoken of as the margin of the unforeseeable, that the blind instrument of Fate appeared. He was a coun...
"I'M ALL ALONE" The same grizzly dawn that looked in on Rose through the dim window of her room on Clark Street, saw Rodney letting himself in his own front door with a latch-key ...
FREDERICA'S PARADOX Two days later, at half past eight in the morning, he walked in on Frederica at breakfast with her two eldest children. He had been able to count on this becau...
THE MIRY WAY Rodney's docility didn't go to the length of the dose of veronal Harriet had recommended, but it did assent to a program that occupied the greater part of the day, in...
IN FLIGHT Analyzing what little Alec McEwen actually said, disregarding the tone of his voice and the look in his eye; disregarding, indeed, the meaning he attached to his own wor...
ANTI-CLIMAX It was a beastly day. A gusty rain, whipping up from the south, by way of answer to the challenge of a heavy snowfall the day before, inflicted a combination of the ri...
THE END OF THE TOUR From Dubuque the company made a circuit northward into Wisconsin and Minnesota, swung around a loop and worked their way south again. Disaster stalked behind t...
THE CONQUEST OF CENTROPOLIS Centropolis wasn't a very big town, but it had a wide, well paved street lined with stores, and a pleasant variety of gravel roads winding round hills ...
THE TUNE CHANGES John Williamson's doctor packed him off to Carlsbad just about the time that Rose achieved the conquest of Centropolis (along in April, 1914, that was). Violet an...
A BROKEN PARALLEL None of the speculative explanations Rodney's friends advanced for his having bought that precious solemn house of the McCreas, together with all its rarified es...
FRIENDS Except for the vacuum where the core and heart of it all ought to have been, Rose's life in New York during the year that put her on the high road to success as a designer...
COULEUR-DE-ROSE The fact that the length of time it would take a taxi to bring him down from his hotel to her apartment was not enough to decide anything in, plan anything in, was...
THE BEGINNING There was a sense in which this prediction of Rodney's about their honeymoon was altogether true, They had great hours--hours of an emotional intensity greater than ...