The Prize to the Hardy by Alice Winter 1905

The Prize to the Hardy
Alice Winter
The Bobbs Merrill Company
Copyright 1905
Illustrated by R. M. Crosby

The hinges are cracked, the binding has breaks but all pages are present. The pages are lightly tanned and have some foxing and finger smudges. The front end paper has many notations written in red pencil. The cover is rubbed, shows wear at the corners and spine ends and there is a chip on the front hinge. Acceptable. Hardcover.

Chapter 1:  When he had leisure for any occupation so unremunerative, old Nicholas Windsor's mind was wont to lose itself in wonder at the curious contrasts of his own career--contrasts that generally took on the concrete forms of Vera and her mother. Familiar as were these musings on his past and his present, they struck him with all the freshness of a new sensation as he let himself out of the threatening twilight of a certain October day into the subdued luxury of the library of his home.

The gray light of late afternoon, struggling in through the windows, was lost in the glow of triumphantly blazing logs. There was serenity and rest in the atmosphere of home. He sank silently into a big easy chair that he might watch and listen, without interrupting the half-somber, half-emotional music that seemed to belong both to the girl and to the hour. Vera was at the piano, where the aquiline outlines of her face against a latticed window beyond, the dusky white of her evening gown and bare arms, the very curve at the back of her neck, raised in his memory the old vision--the vision of a day long years ago.      (#00002029)