conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a book about Bracelet with the genre: Christian Books & Bibles, Literature & Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this book could be 'The Touchstone'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a description for a book titled The Touchstone about Touchstone with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Classics?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Touchstone. please visit www.valdebooks.com for a full list of titles
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know a plot for a book titled The Touchstone about Bracelet with the genre: Christian Books & Bibles, Literature & Fiction?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Touchstone: Stephen Glennard betrays a former love, selling her letters to him so that he may raise the money to marry his beautiful fiancee.\nStephen Glennard's career is falling apart and he desperately needs money so that he may marry his beautiful fiancee.\nHe happens upon an advertisement in a London magazine promising the prospect of financial gain.\nGlennard was once pursued by Margaret Aubyn, a famous and recently deceased author, and he still has her passionate love letters to him.\nGlennard removes his name from the letters and sells them, making him a fortune and building a marriage based on the betrayal of another.\nHowever, his mounting shame and his guilty conscience ultimately force him to confess his betrayal to his wife.\nHe fully expects (and even desires) that his confession will cause her to despise him.\nHowever, her wise and forgiving response opens a way for him to forgive himself and to make what limited amends he can make for his actions.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first four paragraphs for this book?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Touchstone
  He looked up stupidly. His wife still sat with her head thrown back, her pure profile detached against the cushions. She was smiling a little over the prospect his last words had opened. Behind her head shivers of sun and shade ran across the striped awning. A row of maples and a privet hedge hid their neighbor's gables, giving them undivided possession of their leafy half-acre; and life, a moment before, had been like their plot of ground, shut off, hedged in from importunities, impenetrably his and hers. Now it seemed to him that every maple-leaf, every privet-bud, was a relentless human gaze, pressing close upon their privacy. It was as though they sat in a brightly lit room, uncurtained from a darkness full of hostile watchers.... His wife still smiled; and her unconsciousness of danger seemed, in some horrible way, to put her beyond the reach of rescue....
  He had not known that it would be like this. After the first odious weeks, spent in preparing the letters for publication, in submitting them to Flamel, and in negotiating with the publishers, the transaction had dropped out of his consciousness into that unvisited limbo to which we relegate the deeds we would rather not have done but have no notion of undoing. From the moment he had obtained Miss Trent's promise not to sail with her aunt he had tried to imagine himself irrevocably committed. After that, he argued, his first duty was to her—she had become his conscience. The sum obtained from the publishers by Flamel's adroit manipulations and opportunely transferred to Dinslow's successful venture, already yielded a return which, combined with Glennard's professional earnings, took the edge of compulsion from their way of living, making it appear the expression of a graceful preference for simplicity. It was the mitigated poverty which can subscribe to a review or two and have a few flowers on the dinner-table. And already in a small way Glennard was beginning to feel the magnetic quality of prosperity. Clients who had passed his door in the hungry days sought it out now that it bore the name of a successful man. It was understood that a small inheritance, cleverly invested, was the source of his fortune; and there was a feeling that a man who could do so well for himself was likely to know how to turn over other people's money.
  But it was in the more intimate reward of his wife's happiness that Glennard tasted the full flavor of success. Coming out of conditions so narrow that those he offered her seemed spacious, she fitted into her new life without any of those manifest efforts at adjustment that are as sore to a husband's pride as the critical rearrangement of the bridal furniture. She had given him, instead, the delicate pleasure of watching her expand like a sea-creature restored to its element, stretching out the atrophied tentacles of girlish vanity and enjoyment to the rising tide of opportunity. And somehow—in the windowless inner cell of his consciousness where self-criticism cowered—Glennard's course seemed justified by its merely material success. How could such a crop of innocent blessedness have sprung from tainted soil?
  Now he had the injured sense of a man entrapped into a disadvantageous bargain. He had not known it would be like this; and a dull anger gathered at his heart. Anger against whom? Against his wife, for not knowing what he suffered? Against Flamel, for being the unconscious instrument of his wrong-doing? Or against that mute memory to which his own act had suddenly given a voice of accusation? Yes, that was it; and his punishment henceforth would be the presence, the unescapable presence, of the woman he had so persistently evaded. She would always be there now. It was as though he had married her instead of the other. It was what she had always wanted—to be with him—and she had gained her point at last....
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know two more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: She replied that, on the way there, she meant to stop a moment at her mother's; and while she drew on her gloves, he fumbled among the knick-knacks on the mantel-piece for a match to light his cigarette.
  Glennard, he hardly knew how, found himself once more in the study. On the table lay the packet he had given her. It was much smaller—she had evidently gone over the papers with care, destroying the greater number. He loosened the elastic band and spread the remaining envelopes on his desk. The publisher's notice was among them.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Glennard, he hardly knew how, found himself once more in the study. On the table lay the packet he had given her. It was much smaller—she had evidently gone over the papers with care, destroying the greater number. He loosened the elastic band and spread the remaining envelopes on his desk. The publisher's notice was among them.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last two paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It was she who, after awhile, began to speak with a new suffusing diffidence that made him turn a roused eye on her.
  She moved over to him and laid a hesitating hand on his. His head was bent and he did not change his attitude. She sat down beside him without speaking; but their silences now were fertile as rain-clouds—they quickened the seeds of understanding.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the last sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It was she who, after awhile, began to speak with a new suffusing diffidence that made him turn a roused eye on her.
  She moved over to him and laid a hesitating hand on his. His head was bent and he did not change his attitude.