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

Besides, you want the unvarnished and ungarnished truth, and I'm no hand for that. I'm a lawyer.

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

Women are like dogs really. They love like dogs, a little insistently. And they like to fetch and carry and come back wistfully after hard words, and learn rather easily to carry a basket.

I suppose that we are only young, Chris, so long as we can forget. After that we merely remember!

... Washington was not only an important capital. It was a city of fear. Below that glittering and delightful surface there is another story, that of underpaid Government clerks, men and women holding desperately to work that some political pull may at any moment take from them. A city of men in office and clutching that office, and a city of struggle which the country never suspects.

Great loves were almost always great tragedies. Perhaps it was because love was never truly great until the element of sacrifice entered into it.