Bertha Garlan

She was walking slowly down the hill; not by the broad high road which wound its way towards the town, but by the narrow footpath between the trellises of the vines. Her little...

At that moment Herr Rupius seemed to her to be a particularly pitiful figure, for, as he was being wheeled past her in his invalid's chair, she had, in reading the paper, lighte...

She wondered, too, how it was that all this time the possibility of making such a journey had not once entered her mind, the more so as it could be accomplished with so little t...

Thereupon she began, in a cold, businesslike way, to talk about her previous confinements, with a candour and lack of modesty which seemed all the more remarkable because they h...

Of course, she had not answered the letter; she was in love with Emil at the time. Indeed, she had even thought of showing him the letter, but was restrained by the fear of rous...

First of all, she went to the Mahlmanns', where she gave the twins their music lesson. Very often the finger exercises, to which she had to listen there, were positively painful...

And yet, to her own amazement and shame, there overflowed from these unseemly words of a man who appeared absurd to her, the surge, so to speak, of desire. And when his words ha...

Bertha sat on a seat and watched two little girls who were jumping over a piece of string, as she had so often done herself, when a child--it seemed to her, in just the same spo...

After a few minutes she went out again into the street, where the broad daylight and the din of the traffic affected her as something new, something which she had not experience...

She handed it out to him and he opened it. Then she got out and they both stood under the shelter of the umbrella, on which the rain was rattling down. Was this the street in wh...

The organ chimed in, but still the violin solo remained dominant over the rest. Bertha was so moved that tears rose to her eyes. At length the solo came to an end, as though eng...

From her sister-in-law's Bertha went on to the Mahlmanns' and gave the twins their music lesson. The finger exercises and scales which she had to hear were at first intolerable...

And a thrill of fear arose within her.... If he were to show her letter to another woman, maybe ... make merry over it with her.... No, how on earth could such an idea come into...

Before she went out, Bertha pressed Fritz to her heart, and she recalled the passage in Emil's letter: it is the place where your child was born.... Indeed, that was quite right...