Anthony Hope

“ Probably the chef seems ridiculous too? A man of another profession can't have the feeling in its full intensity. It seems ridiculous! But think—doesn't that very fact increase the tragedy? To suffer from a feeling deep and painful, and to be aware that it is in the eyes of the world at large ridiculous—can you imagine anything more distressing?"
"Your story illustrates more than one great truth, I perceive, Colonel."
"If it did not, sir, I should never have troubled you with it," he answered with lofty courtesy.
"And what happened? Did love triumph over all?" ”

“ She knew only too well how Stretchley's would feel towards the Sky-high. And George was Stretchley's, and she was the Sky-high! One sometimes reads of mésalliances in the papers or meets them among one's acquaintance. Never have I met one like this. The very fact of the occupation being in essence the same intensified the discrepancy and the contrast. Which, gentlemen, would surprise and, I may say, shock you more—that a duke should marry oil or soap, or that a really first-class purveyor should take his bride from a fried-fish shop? No man of perception can hesitate. ”

“ It is within the bounds of the same occupation that the greatest contrasts, the greatest distance, the greatest gulfs of feeling are to be found. I value an otherwise painful experience because it exhibited that philosophic truth in so vivid and striking a manner. ”

“ In helping one's friends, one does. However George wouldn't have it, and at last I had to be content with a compromise. He wasn't to speak of the business before he spoke of love, nor to speak of love before he spoke of the business. He was to speak of them both at once. That was what we decided."
"Rather difficult," commented the new member, with that reflective smile which I began to recognise as habitual.
"Pray, sir, would you expect such a thing to be easy?" demanded the Colonel, with an approach to warmth. ”

“ And I needn't tell you that Stretchley's have few equals—and no superiors. When you say Stretchley's, you say everything. I have never gone to them myself: partly because I couldn't afford it, more perhaps from motives of delicacy—from consideration for poor George Langhorn's feelings. He has always preferred not to act professionally for his personal friends, even though he lost money in consequence. ”

“ I remember that, owing perhaps to the associations of the subject, my regard was fixed on the new member's grey trousers, to which he himself continued to pay a thoughtful attention. The Colonel took up the tale again in impressive tones.
"It has been my lot," he said, "to witness many instances of the perverse working of what we call fate or destiny, and of the cruel freaks which it plays with us poor human creatures. ”

“ The longest-living author of this work died in 1933, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 90 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”