[Illustration: GERTRUDE ATHERTON] The Bell in the Fog And Other Stories By Gertrude Atherton Author of "Rulers of Kings" "The Conqueror" etc. New York and London Harper & Brothers Publishers :: 1905 To The Master Henry James Contents I. THE BELL IN THE FOG II. THE STRIDING PLACE III. THE DEAD AND THE COUNTESS IV. THE GREATEST GOOD OF THE GREATEST NUMBER V. A MONARCH OF A SMALL SURVEY VI. THE TRAGEDY OF A SNOB VII. CROWNED WITH ONE CREST VIII. DEATH AND THE WOMAN IX. A PROLOGUE (TO AN UNWRITTEN PLAY) X. TALBOT OF URSULA I The Bell in the Fog I The great author had realized one of the dreams of his ambitious youth, the possession of an ancestral hall in England. It was not so much the good American's reverence for ancestors that inspired the longing to consort with the ghosts of an ancient line, as artistic appreciation of the mellowness, the dignity, the aristocratic aloofness of walls that have sheltered, and furniture that has embraced, generations and generations of the dead. To mere wealth, only his astute and incomparably modern brain yielded respect; his ego raised its goose-flesh at the sight of rooms furnished with a single check, conciliatory as the taste might be. The dumping of the old interiors of Europe into the glistening shells of the United States not only roused him almost to passionate protest, but offended his patriotism--which he classified among his unworked ideals. The average American was not an artist, therefore he had no excuse for even the affectation of cosmopolitanism. Heaven knew he was national enough in everything else, from his accent to his lack of repose; let his surroundings be in keeping. Orth had left the United States soon after his first successes, and, his art being too great to be confounded with locality, he had long since ceased to be spoken of as an American author. All civilized Europe furnished stages for his puppets, and, if never picturesque nor impassioned, his originality was as overwhelming as his style. His subtleties might not always be understood--indeed, as a rule, they were not--but the musical mystery of his language and the penetrating charm of his lofty and cultivated mind induced raptures in the initiated, forever denied to those who failed to appreciate him.