The Project Gutenberg EBook of Iole, by Robert W. Chambers

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Title: Iole

Author: Robert W. Chambers

Illustrator: Arthur C. Becker

Release Date: January 25, 2008 [EBook #24426]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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WORKS OF ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

Cardigan A King and a Few Dukes
The Maid-at-Arms The Conspirators
The Reckoning The Cambric Mask
Lorraine The Haunts of Men
Maids of Paradise Outsiders
Ashes of Empire A Young Man in a Hurry
The Red Republic In Search of the Unknown
The King in Yellow In the Quarter
The Maker of Moons The Mystery of Choice
Iole

FOR CHILDREN

Outdoor-Land River-Land
Orchard-Land Forest-Land

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

IOLE

[Illustration]

[Illustration:
"The little things," he continued, delicately perforating
the atmosphere as though selecting a diatom.]

IOLE

By

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

[Illustration]

D. APPLETON & CO.
New York MDCCCCV

[Illustration]

Copyright, 1905, by

ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

_Published May, 1905_

TO

GEORGE HORACE LORIMER

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

PREFACE

Does anybody remember the opera of _The Inca_, and that heartbreaking
episode where the Court Undertaker, in a morbid desire to increase his
professional skill, deliberately accomplishes the destruction of his
middle-aged relatives in order to inter them for the sake of practise?

If I recollect, his dismal confession runs something like this:

"It was in a bleak November
When I slew them, I remember,
As I caught them unawares
Drinking tea in rocking-chairs."

And so he talked them to death, the subject being "What Really is Art?"
Afterward he was sorry--

"The squeak of a door,