The Project Gutenberg EBook of Six Women, by Victoria Cross

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Title: Six Women

Author: Victoria Cross

Release Date: August 21, 2004 [EBook #13238]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SIX WOMEN ***

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Six Women

By
VICTORIA CROSS

NEW YORK
MITCHELL KENNERLEY

* * * * *

_BY VICTORIA CROSS_

LIFE'S SHOP WINDOW
ANNA LOMBARD
SIX WOMEN
SIX CHAPTERS OF A MAN'S LIFE
THE WOMAN WHO DIDN'T
TO-MORROW?
PAULA
A GIRL OF THE KLONDIKE
THE RELIGION OF EVELYN HASTINGS
LIFE OF MY HEART

* * * * *

DEDICATED TO
H.M.G. AND E.F.C.
AND OUR MEMORIES OF THE EAST.

SIX WOMEN

I

CHAPTER I

Listless and despondent, feeling that he hated everything in life,
Hamilton walked slowly down the street. The air was heavy, and the
sun beat down furiously on the yellow cotton awnings stretched over
his head. Clouds of dust rose in the roadway as the white bullocks
shuffled along, drawing their creaking wooden carts, and swarms of
flies buzzed noisily in the yellow, dusty sunshine. Hamilton went
on aimlessly; he was hot, he was tired, his eyes and head ached, he
was thirsty; but all these disagreeable sensations were nothing
beside the intense mental nausea that filled him, a nausea of life.
It rose up in and pervaded him, uncontrollable as a physical
malady. In vain he called upon his philosophy; he had practised it
so long that it was worn out. Like an old mantle from the
shoulders, it fell from him in rags, and he was glad. He felt he
hated his philosophy only less than he hated life--hated, yet
desired as the man hates a mistress he covets, and has never yet
possessed. "Never had anything, never done anything, never felt
anything decent yet," he mused.

He was an exceptionally handsome and attractive individual, and
though in reality forty years of age, he had the figure, the look,
and air of twenty-eight. Masses of black hair, without a white
thread, waved