Mary Roberts Rinehart

“ On the Monday night after he had asked Elizabeth to go to the theater he went into David's office and closed the door. Lucy, alive to every movement in the old house, heard him go in and, rocking in her chair overhead, her hands idle in her lap, waited in tense anxiety for the interview to end. She thought she knew what Dick would ask, and what David would answer. And, in a way, David would be right. Dick, fine, lovable, upstanding Dick, had a right to the things other men had, to love and a home of his own, to children, to his own full life. ”

“ Her mind began to turn on the possibility of keeping him away from Norada.
Some time later she heard the office door open and then close with Dick's characteristic slam. He came up the stairs, two at a time as was his custom, and knocked at her door. When he came in she saw what David's answer had been, and she closed her eyes for an instant.
“Put on your things,” he said gayly, “and we'll take a ride on the hill-tops. I've arranged for a moon.”
And when she hesitated:
“It makes you sleep, you know. I'm going, if I have to ride alone and talk to an imaginary lady beside me.” ”

“ V WHEN he finished medical college Dick Livingstone had found, like other men, that the two paths of ambition and duty were parallel and did not meet. Along one lay his desire to focus all his energy in one direction, to follow disease into the laboratory instead of the sick room, and there to fight its unsung battles. And win. He felt that he would win.
Along the other lay David. ”