"What was it you were saying about selfishness?" she asked. "Oh, I remember. It was nonsense." "Certainly." She laughed, adding: "Selfishness is so simply defined you know." "Is it? How." "A refusal to renounce. That covers everything," she concluded. "Sometimes renunciation is weakness -- isn't it?" he suggested. "In what case for example?" "Well, suppose we take love." "Very well, you may take it if you like it." "Suppose you loved a man!" he insisted. "Let him beware! What then?" "-- And, suppose it would distress your family if you married him?" "I'd give him up." "If you loved him?" "Love? That is the poorest excuse for selfishness, Mr. Siward." "So you would ruin your happiness and his --" "A girl ought to find more happiness in renouncing a selfish love than in love itself," announced Miss Landis with that serious conviction characteristic of her years. "Of course," assented Siward with a touch of malice, "if you really do find more happiness in renouncing love than in love itself, it would be foolish not to do it --" "Mr. Siward! You are derisive. Besides, you are not acute. A woman is always an opportunist. When the event takes place I shall know what to do."
Author Biography
Robert William Chambers (1865 - 1933) was an American artist and fiction writer, best known for his book of short stories entitled The King in Yellow, published in 1895. Robert was first educated at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and then entered the Art Students' League at around the age of twenty, where the artist Charles Dana Gibson was his fellow student. Chambers studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts and at Academie Julian, in Paris from 1886 to 1893 and his work was displayed at the Salon as early as 1889. On his return to New York, he succeeded in selling his illustrations to Life, Truth, and Vogue magazines. Then, for reasons unclear, he devoted his time to writing, producing his first novel, In the Quarter (written in 1887 in Munich). His most famous, and perhaps most meritorious, effort is The King in Yellow, a collection of Art Nouveau short stories published in 1895. This included several famous weird short stories which are connected by the theme of a fictitious drama of the same title, which drives those who read it insane. E. F. Bleiler described The King in Yellow as one of the most important works of American supernatural fiction. It was also strongly admired by H. P. Lovecraft and his circle. Chambers returned to the weird genre in his later short story collections The Maker of Moons, The Mystery of Choice and The Tree of Heaven, but none earned him as much success as The King in Yellow. Some of Chambers's work contains elements of science fiction, such as In Search of the Unknown and Police!!!, about a zoologist who encounters monsters. Chambers later turned to writing romantic fiction to earn a living. According to some estimates, Chambers had one of the most successful literary careers of his period, his later novels selling well and a handful achieving best-seller status. Many of his works were also serialized in magazines.
