Transcriber’s Note Italic text displayed as: _italic_ CHAINS [Illustration: CHAINS] LESSER NOVELS AND STORIES BY THEODORE DREISER [Illustration: Decoration] _New York_ BONI & LIVERIGHT 1927 _Copyright, 1927, by_ THEODORE DREISER _Printed in the United States of America_ FOREWORD The inevitabilities of our fate are: Love and hope, fear and death, interwoven with our lacks, inhibitions, jealousies and greeds. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. SANCTUARY 9 II. THE HAND 43 III. CHAINS 64 IV. ST. COLUMBA AND THE RIVER 98 V. CONVENTION 133 VI. KHAT 156 VII. TYPHOON 181 VIII. THE OLD NEIGHBORHOOD 219 IX. PHANTOM GOLD 248 X. MARRIAGE FOR ONE 286 XI. FULFILMENT 301 XII THE VICTOR 323 XIII. THE SHADOW 347 XIV THE “MERCY” OF GOD 371 XV. THE PRINCE WHO WAS A THIEF 392 CHAINS I SANCTUARY I Primarily, there were the conditions under which she was brought to fifteen years of age: the crowded, scummy tenements; the narrow green-painted halls with their dim gas-jets, making the entrance look more like that of a morgue than a dwelling-place; the dirty halls and rooms with their green or blue or brown walls painted to save the cost of paper; the bare wooden floors, long since saturated with every type of grease and filth from oleomargarine and suet leaked from cheap fats or meats, to beer and whiskey and tobacco-juice. A little occasional scrubbing by some would-be hygienic tenant was presumed to keep or make clean some of the chambers and halls. And then the streets outside—any of the streets by which she had ever been surrounded—block upon block of other red, bare, commonplace tenements crowded to the doors with human life, the space before them sped over by noisy, gassy trucks and vehicles of all kinds. And stifling in summer, dusty and icy in winter; decorated on occasion by stray cats and dogs, pawing in ashcans, watched over by lordly policemen, and always running with people, people, people—who made their living heaven only knows how, existing in such a manner as their surroundings suggested.