The Squirrel-Cage

“Through Pity and Terror Effecting a Purification of the Heart” 261 XXV A Black Milestone 270 XXVI A Hint from Childhood 277 XXVII Lydia Reaches Her Goal and has Her Talk with Her Husband 289 XXVIII “the American Man” 307 XXIX “... in Tragic Life, God Wot, No Villain Need Be. Passions Spin the Plot.” 318 XXX Tribute to the Minotaur 327 BUT IT’S NOT TOO LATE FOR ARIADNE XXXI Protection from the Minotaur 337 XXXII As Ariadne Saw it 342 XXXIII What is Best for the Children? 351 XXXIV Through the Long Night 359 XXXV The Swaying Balance 365 XXXVI Another Day Begins 369 ILLUSTRATIONS Paul stood by her, looking down into her eyes, bending over her, smiling, pressing, confident, masterful (page 96) Frontispiece PAGE “You say beautiful things!” he replied quietly. “My rough quarters are glorified for me.” 68 “No, no; I can't—see him—I can't see him any more—” 136 “I see everything now,” she went on. “He could not stop” 272 THE SQUIRREL-CAGE THE FAIRY PRINCESS AN AMERICAN FAMILY The house of the Emery family was a singularly good example of the capacity of wood and plaster and brick to acquire personality. It was the physical symbol of its owners’ position in life; it was the history of their career, written down for all to see, and as such they felt in it the most justifiable pride. When Mr. and Mrs. Emery, directly after their wedding in a small Central New York village, had gone West to Ohio they had spent their tiny capital in building a small story-and-a-half cottage, ornamented with the jig-saw work and fancy turning popular in 1872, and this had been the nucleus of their present rambling, picturesque, many-roomed home. Every step in the long series of changes which had led from its first state to its last had a profound and gratifying significance for the Emerys, and its final condition, prosperous, modern, sophisticated, with the right kind of woodwork in every room that showed, with the latest, most unobtrusively artistic effects in decoration, represented their culminating well-earned position in the inner circle of the best society of Endbury. Moreover, they felt that just as the house had been attained with effort, self-denial and careful calculations, yet still without incurring debt, so their social position had been secured by unremitting diligence and care, but with no loss of self-respect or even of dignity.…