Dark Days

Hugh Conway

Basil North, a thirty-year-old medical doctor, leads a busy life establishing his medical practice in a large English provincial town. His life has no room for a woman in it until Basil meets the beautiful Phillipa and immediately falls deeply in love. But Phillipa loves him not. She moves to London and, while there, meets and marries another man. The crestfallen Basil, believing that he has lost the only woman in the world whom he can love, sells his medical practice and becomes a morose man without a goal or object in life. After a time, Philippa’s scoundrel husband becomes abusive and abandons her. Phillipa then returns to Basil’s life, giving him hope for a second chance to woo her. But the next night, Philippa’s husband is murdered, and Basil believes Philippa to be the prime suspect. Dark days are ahead as Basil tries to protect his love from the law and Philippa grapples with her conscience.

The story explores the power that love has over human nature, right vs. wrong and the inevitable pursuit of justice. Written in 1884 in the first person, Dark Days is an early psychological novel as the author consistently explores the mental states of both Philippa and Basil.
- Summary by Warren Kati