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The Defeat of the City Synopsis

Robert Walmsley, at the end of six years in the city, has won fortune, fame, and Alice Van Der Pool, a "daughter of the old burghers, high and cool and white and inaccessible." So Robert feels that he has achieved the ultimate end of success and happiness. Alice finds a letter written to Robert by his mother, a letter straight from home, full of farm lore and gossip. She prevails upon Robert to take her for a visit to the farm. Robert is dismayed at the prospect, fearing Alicia will be shocked at the crudeness of his rural atavism. There his wife sits silent and immovable while Robert cuts ridiculous capers. Alicia presently ascends to her room. Robert, suddenly feeling that he is disgraced in her eves, and that he has been unmasked by his own actions and that "all the polish, the poise, the form that the city has given him has fallen from him like an ill-fitting mantle at the first breath of a country breeze," grows quiet. Presently he follows Alicia upstairs, prepared to meet his fate. He knew the rigid lines that a Van Der Pool would draw She is standing at the window, in the twilight. Robert silently takes his place beside her. "Robert," said the cool, calm voice of his judge, "I thought I married a gentleman," Alicia steps closer to Robert. "But," she continues, "I find that I have married something better, a man. Bob, dear, kiss me, won't you?"

Thin Ice Synopsis

When Alice Winton's brother embezzles funds belonging to his employer, Benjamin Graves, a promoter of worthless mining stock, she saves him from arrest by signing over to Graves a hefty promissory note. Later Graves deliberately wrecks the mining company in which Alice's invalid father has invested his money, and the shock from the resulting bankruptcy, kills him. Alice marries Robert Burton, a noted criminologist who believes in the theory, "once a thief, always a thief," and the couple takes up temporary residence with District Attorney Jeffrey Miller. In Miller's safe are incriminating documents concerning Graves's illegal activities, and Graves, knowing of their existence, blackmails Alice into stealing them by showing her some compromising love letters to which he has forged her name. As Alice robs the safe, Ned, who has been arrested for larceny and is now being tested by the reform-minded district attorney, discovers her. After Ned hears of Graves's misdeeds, the burglar alarm sounds, and he and Alice are spotted. Casting suspicion on himself, Ned vows revenge on Graves and flees. Fearful, Alice goes to Graves's apartment, finds him dead just as the police arrive, and is implicated in the crime. At that moment, Rose La Vere, Graves's jilted lover, staggers in and, before dying from self-inflicted poison, confesses to the murder, thus clearing both Alice and her brother.