E-text prepared by David Garcia, Mary Meehan,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
NOTE
No character in this book was drawn from any actual person past orpresent.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I. THE SHADOW
CHAPTER II. GIDEON VETCH
CHAPTER III. CORINNA OF THE OLD PRINT SHOP
CHAPTER IV. THE TRIBAL INSTINCT
CHAPTER V. MARGARET
CHAPTER VI. MAGIC
CHAPTER VII. CORINNA GOES TO WAR
CHAPTER VIII. THE WORLD AND PATTY
CHAPTER IX. SEPTEMBER ROSES
CHAPTER X. PATTY AND CORINNA
CHAPTER XI. THE OLD WALLS AND THE RISING TIDE
CHAPTER XII. A JOURNEY INTO MEAN STREETS
CHAPTER XIII. CORINNA WONDERS
CHAPTER XIV. A LITTLE LIGHT ON HUMAN NATURE
CHAPTER XV. CORINNA OBSERVES
CHAPTER XVI. THE FEAR OF LIFE
CHAPTER XVII. MRS. GREEN
CHAPTER XVIII. MYSTIFICATION
CHAPTER XIX. THE SIXTH SENSE
CHAPTER XX. CORINNA FACES LIFE
CHAPTER XXI. DANCE MUSIC
CHAPTER XXII. THE NIGHT
CHAPTER XXIII. THE DAWN
CHAPTER XXIV. THE VICTORY OF GIDEON VETCH
The winter's twilight, as thick as blown smoke, was drifting through theCapitol Square. Already the snow covered walks and the frozen fountainswere in shadow; but beyond the irregular black boughs of the trees thesky was still suffused with the burning light of the sunset. Over thehead of the great bronze Washington a single last gleam of sunshine shotsuddenly before it vanished amid the spires and chimneys of the city,which looked as visionary and insubstantial as the glowing horizon.
Stopping midway of the road, Stephen Culpeper glanced back over thevague streets and the clearer distance, where the approaching dusk spunmauve and silver cobwebs of air. From that city, it seemed to him, a newand inscrutable force—the force of an idea—had risen within the lastfew months to engulf the Square and all that the Square had ever meantin his life. Though he was only twenty-six, he felt that he had watchedthe decay and dissolution