Asbeïn: From the Life of a Virtuoso

"He wished to take me with him," she still repeats, as if the words held consolation; "yes, he wished to take me with him." Then she remembers the embarrassed, uneasy expression...

She became, as she had wished, the confidante of his work. When he had sketched on paper the plan of a composition, he played it to her, now on his violin, which he passionately...

The lilies stand straight and slender, with golden hearts in their deep, white calices, right and left of the door of the little Hermitage, into which Natalie has again moved wh...

Natalie's nature was broken. An unexpressed, numbing, blunting conviction that this was the natural course of things, and that nothing of all this could be changed, had overpowe...

From that moment the enthusiasm of the audience rapidly declined. The lack of dramatic action in the libretto became more and more significant. More and more difficultly the poo...

If, during the first years of his marriage, through the lovely influence of his young wife, and especially through the wish to satisfy, to please her in everything, he had learn...

The agreement between Lensky and the impressario was really completed, the contract was signed, Lensky's departure fixed for the beginning of October. Meanwhile, he would pass t...

He would not let her finish. "Mesalliance!" said he, and laughed very mockingly, quite shortly and softly, to himself, and began to drum on the top of his hat again. "Mesallianc...

Meanwhile it cost him the greatest self-restraint not to fall at her feet immediately, so charming and beautiful was she. Everything about her was beautiful: her tall but beauti...

A flash of lightning rends the darkness--Natalie sees the immense stairs of the Bruehl terrace, with its adornments of colossal gilded statues; she sees the broad, black river f...

Then the first deep shadow fell on her happiness. Lensky, to whom every long separation from her was unbearable, when he undertook a long tour through central Europe, in spite o...

The heavily perfumed sultry air penetrated through the drawn curtains into the Assanows' drawing-room. The Jeliagins had brought a couple of Parisian friends with them, and natu...

"But--do you really not recognize me?" With these words, and with friendly, outstretched hands, a young lady hastened toward a man who, with gloomily contracted brow, wrapped in...

Toward morning Nikolas fell asleep in the arm-chair in which he watched by his mother's bed. All at once he felt that some one pulled him by both sleeves. He started up; his mot...