



Produced by Al Haines.





                        *David Graham Phillips*


                                _*The*_*
                             HUNGRY HEART*

                              _*A NOVEL*_



                          NEW YORK AND LONDON
                        D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
                                  1909




                          Copyright, 1909, by
                        D. APPLETON AND COMPANY



                      _Published September, 1909_




                           *THE HUNGRY HEART*



                                  *I*


Courtship and honeymoon of Richard Vaughan and Courtney Benedict are
told accurately enough by a thousand chroniclers of love's fairy tales
and dreams.  Where such romances end in a rosily vague "And they lived
happily ever after," there this history begins.  Richard and Courtney
have returned from Arcady to reality, to central Indiana and the Vaughan
homestead, across the narrow width of Wenona the lake from Wenona the
town.

The homecoming was late in a June evening, with a perfumed coolness
descending upon the young lovers from the grand old trees, round the
Vaughan house like his bodyguard round a king.  Next morning toward
eight Courtney, still half asleep, reached out hazily.  Her hand met
only the rumpled linen on Richard's side of the huge fourposter. She
started up, brushed back the heavy wave of auburn hair fallen over her
brow, gazed down at his pillow.  The dent of his head, but not he.  Her
eyes searched the dimness. The big room contained only a few large
pieces of old mahogany; at a glance she saw into every corner.  Alone in
the room.  Her eyes, large and anxious now, regarded the half-open door
of the dressing room to the rear.

"Dick!" she called hopefully.

No answer.

"Dick!" she repeated, a note of doubt in her voice.

Silence.

"Dick!" she repeated reproachfully.  It was the first morning she had
awakened without the sense of his nearness that had become so dear, so
necessary.  It was the first morning in this house strange to her--in
this now life they were to make beautiful and happy together.  She gave
a forlorn sigh like a disappointed child, drew up her knees, rested her
elbows upon them, and her small head upon her hands.  Sitting there in
the midst of that bed big enough for half a dozen as small as she, she
suggested a butterfly poised motionless with folded wings.  A moment and
she lifted her drooped head.  How considerate of him not to wake her
when the three days and nights on train had been so wearing!

Swift and light as a butterfly she sprang from the bed, flung open the
shutters of the lake-front windows.  In poured summer like gay cavalcade
through breach in gloomy walls--summer in full panoply of perfume and
soft air and sparkling sunshine.  She almost laughed aloud for joy at
this timely rescue.  She gazed away across the lake to the town where
she was born and bred!  "Home!" she cried.  "And so happy--so utterly
happy!"  Her expression, her whole manner, her quick movements gave the
impression of the impulsive self-unconsciousness of a child.

It was a radiant figure, small and perfect like a sun sprite, that
issued from the room three quarters of an hour later to flit along the
polished oak hall, to descend a stairway glistening like hall above and
wider and loftier hall below.  With hair piled high on her small head,
with tail of matinee over her arm and tall heels clicking merrily on the
steps, she whistled as she went.  Some people--women--criticised that
laughter-loving mouth of hers as too wide for so small a face.  It
certainly did not suggest a button-hole.  But no one could have found
fault with the shape of the mouth or with the coloring, whether of the
lips or within, or with her teeth, pearl white and seeming the whiter
for the rose bronze of her skin--the shade that seems to be of the
essence of youth, health, and summer.  Her nose was rather large, but
slender and well shaped.  It was the nose of mobility, of sensitiveness,
of intelligence, not at all of repose.  And there were her eyes, of a
strange soft emerald, with long dark lashes; the brows long also and
only slightly curved, and slender yet distinct.  These eyes were her
greatest beauty--greater even than her skin.  It would have been
difficult to say whether in them or in her mouth lay her greatest charm,
for charm is not always beauty, and beauty often wholly lacks charm.

But woman feels that figure determines the woman--"the woman" meaning,
of course, efficiency as