Edward S. Van Zile

“ A half-mocking smile came to her lips as she recalled those words of the tale that she had read, but there was no mockery in her eyes as they met her own gaze in the glass.
Turning from the mirror she crossed the room hurriedly toward the hall door, as one who doubted her own stability of purpose. The hall, dimly lighted, seemed to check her steps for a moment as she stood motionless upon the threshold of her room, gazing into its shadow-filled depths. She could hear the ticking of a tall clock, the strange sighs and creakings that always beset a great house in the darker hours. ”

“ Presently, to her mingled surprise and satisfaction, she found herself absorbed in a magazine story, a homely tale told in the dialect of the New England fisher-folk, a patois that came to her like the echo of a Summer breeze playing across a tumbling sea. With delicate art the writer had awakened her interest at the outset in the woman who sat at midnight beside the cradle of her sick child, listening for the footsteps of a belated fisherman. Would the baby live until her husband's return? ”

“ The cosmic method of comparison had of a sudden conflicted with her perfect egotism, and the steady, mocking glare of that remote, glowing world—Jupiter or Saturn or Venus, or some other planetary marvel—had seemed to bring to her reluctant comprehension the astounding pettiness and insignificance of her own achievements, hopes, fears, ambitions, aspirations, regrets. ”