Olive Higgins Prouty

“ If a younger man devoted an evening to Helen, if she seemed to respond to his attentions with interest and vivacity, a deep melancholy would take possession of Cornelius Morrison—unreasonable, perhaps, but uncontrollable and terribly painful.
Helen needed no explanations. With her intuition she saw as clearly as through a microscope into the reason for her husband's occasional waves of depression. Not for anything in the world would she hurt him. She might not love him in the romantic way that she had loved Stephen. ”

“ So if you want a divorce, Stephen, go ahead and dig up Ed Munn, and I'll dig up Helen Morrison and we'll give the public something worth reading. Of course, I, myself, don't want a divorce. There's nobody I want to marry. I'd see myself dead rather than tied up to Ed Munn. And I can't see that it's any advantage to a woman with a daughter she's got to bring out in society to be a grass-widow. I'd just rather have you in New York, on business, the way you've always been. ”

“ To-night there were fresh logs flaming in the open fireplace. There was a flame-colored porcelain bowl, placed on each of the chests on either side of the hearth. There was a piece of flame-colored brocade, brilliant as a bank of nasturtiums, thrown over one end of the long Sheraton sofa.
When Helen came into the room Stephen was aware that she was in pure white, but there was something as brilliant about her, as flame-colored, as the two bowls, as the brocade, as the fire. ”