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Unbusinesslike habits and methods are certainly not
traits to be cultivated, for we often suffer grievously from their
existence; yet as far as possible the author should be free from
distracting cares. The novelist does his best work when abstracted
from the actual world and living in its ideal counterpart which
for the time he is imagining. When his creative work is completed,
he should live very close to the real world, or else he will be
imagining a state of things which neither God nor man had any hand
in bringing about.



TAKEN ALIVE AND OTHER STORIES


TAKEN ALIVE


CHAPTER I
SOMETHING BEFORE UNKNOWN

Clara Heyward was dressed in deep mourning, and it was evident
that the emblems of bereavement were not worn merely in compliance
with a social custom. Her face was pallid from grief, and her dark
beautiful eyes were dim from much weeping. She sat in the little
parlor of a cottage located in a large Californian city, and
listened with apathetic expression as a young man pleaded for the
greatest and most sacred gift that a woman can bestow.


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