The stage on which we play our little dramas of life and love has for most of us but one setting.

there comes a time when ambition ceases to burn, or romance to stir, and the highest cry of the human heart is for peace.

when knowledge comes in at the door, fear and superstition fly out of the window.

Natalie Spenser was giving a dinner. She was not an easy hostess.

every act of one's life is the unavoidable result of every act that has preceded it.

I suppose there is something in all of us that harks back to the soil. When you come to think of it, what are picnics but outcroppings of instinct? No one really enjoys them or expects to enjoy them, but with the first warm days some prehistoric instinct takes us out into the woods, to fry potatoes over a strangling wood fire or spend the next week getting grass stains out of our clothes. It must be instinct; every atom of intelligence warns us to stay at home near the refrigerator.

The mystery story is two stories in one: the story of what happened and the story of what appeared to happen.