The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fidelity, by Susan Glaspell

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Title: Fidelity
A Novel

Author: Susan Glaspell

Release Date: May 19, 2010 [EBook #32432]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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FIDELITY

A NOVEL

BY SUSAN GLASPELL

Author of "THE GLORY OF THE CONQUERED," "THE VISIONING," ETC.

BOSTON
SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

_Copyright, 1915_
BY SMALL, MAYNARD AND COMPANY
INCORPORATED)

Printers
S. J. PARKHILL & CO., BOSTON U.S.A.

TO
LUCY HUFFAKER

FIDELITY

CHAPTER ONE

It was hard to get back into the easy current of everyday talk. Cora
Albright's question had too rudely pulled them out of it, disturbing the
quiet flow of inconsequential things. Even when they had recovered and
were safely flowing along on the fact that the new hotel was to cost two
hundred thousand dollars, after they had moved with apparent serenity to
lamentation over a neighbor who was sick in bed and without a cook, it
was as if they were making a display of the ease with which they could
move on those commonplace things, as if thus to deny the consciousness
of whirlpools near by.

So they seemed to Dr. Deane Franklin, who, secured by the shadow of the
porch vine, could smile to himself at the way he saw through them.
Though Deane Franklin's smile for seeing through people was not so much
a smile as a queer little twist of the left side of his face, a screwing
up of it that half shut one eye and pulled his mouth out of shape, the
same twist that used to make people call him a homely youngster. He was
thinking that Cora's question, or at any rate her manner in asking it,
would itself have told that she had lived away from Freeport for a
number of years. She did not know that they did not talk about Ruth
Holland any more, that certainly they d