Dr. Adriaan

The afternoon sky was full of thick, dark clouds, drifting ponderously grey over almost black violet: clouds so dark, heavy and thick that they seemed to creep laboriously upon...

That night, Marietje van Saetzema had a dream which was like a nightmare. She was running down a sloping mountain, deep as an abyss; she rushed and rushed and Addie came rushing...

It was raining on the morning when Adolphine alighted at Zeist-Driebergen and hurried to the tram which was on the point of leaving. She looked very weary and lean, with bitter...

Marietje certainly looked well. She would always remain a little pallid, frail and thin, with narrow shoulders; but her cheeks had filled out, her eyes showed a dewy calmness an...

A few days' skating produced a sudden, unexpected lightness of heart; and Mathilde grew more animated. The members of Gerdy's tennis-club met again on the ice; Guy did nothing b...

Ernst was still living in his rooms in the Nieuwe Uitleg, surrounded by his collections, surrounded by his hobbies. A man of fifty now, he led a silent, solitary life amid his b...

Addie returned to the Hague that evening; and seldom had he felt so heavy and listless, as if he knew nothing for himself. No, he knew nothing, nothing more for his poor self, a...

But Constance refused to listen. She well knew that there was no love lost between Mathilde and the rest of them; and it always upset her that, on the one hand, Mathilde always...

Summer came suddenly: fine, sunny days followed one after the other, all the windows in the big house were opened and the summer seemed to enter and drive everything of winter o...

Now at last, after days, he was himself again! Alone, all alone, in the night, in his study, while everyone in the house slept, while only the night itself was awake: the night...

"The summer is past. This is our typical weather. Look, here, out of my window, you can see the clouds coming up over the moor as you never do downstairs, because the trees in t...

It was six o'clock. Constance and Marietje had taken Grandmamma upstairs, for she no longer had her meals with the rest, but went to bed very early in the evening. And they were...

And the melancholy of bygone things seemed to swell on the loud moaning of the wind during the following days, when the rain poured down; the house these days seemed full of the...

"Yes," said Paul, as he followed Constance out of her own sitting-room, while she, with her key-basket over her arm, went down the stairs with Marietje and Gerdy, "yes, I'm not...

Easter was at hand; spring brought a new balminess to the wind, a new softness to the rain, a new warmth to the air, which hung low in a heavy grey canopy; and much had changed...

Since that first time, Mathilde was pricked with continual jealousy; and in the mornings, when Addie went upstairs to Marietje van Saetzema's room, she always followed him and s...

Days had come of endless flaking snow; and the hard frost kept the snow tight-packed in the garden, alongside the house, the silent, massive building whose thick white lines sto...

At the Hague, Mathilde felt a certain gratification, a satisfaction; and the bustle of the early weeks gave her a pleasant feeling of excitement and made her forget the despairi...

"Disturbing me, my dear fellow? Do you imagine that you ever disturb me? No, you never disturb me.... At least, I can count the times when you have disturbed me."

Then Adeline came in, looking for Addie. He was so tired yesterday that she had not cared to ask him the result of his visit to Amsterdam, but now, while he was still playing wi...

"Leave me alone with her for a moment, Aunt," whispered Addie. "Here," feeling in his pocket, "here's a letter from Guy, posted in New York. You'll see that he has found work, t...

In the midst of the sunshine on that summer day a spirit of melancholy descended upon the whole of the big house and set the nerves of all the inmates tingling. Addie had been,...

She put out her hand, took his and drew him gently up the stairs. She turned up the gas in her sitting-room. She changed quickly into a tea-gown; and he thought that he would no...

The household took its everyday course of a morning: the everyday life, driven indoors by the merciless winter, the grey skies and blustering wind, rolled on softly and evenly i...

"There's always something," Mathilde grumbled to herself. "Addie is physician-in-ordinary to his relations. When it's not Klaasje, it's Adèletje, or Mary, or Emilie. There's alw...

The oppressive, sultry, rainless summer days followed one after the other; and the night also waited in oppressive expectation of oppressive things, which were to happen and nev...

And the hard-braced north-east winds, which had brought the nipping frost with them, came no more; they had passed; and it was no longer the strong, boisterous winds, but the an...

The old lady was sitting silently at the window--in the grey morning, which seemed spent and weary with the wind out of doors--and her thoughts were following a far course of th...

Oh, he was to blame, he was to blame, he was to blame! He saw suddenly, in a sort of despair, that the only answer to the question which he sometimes had to ask in vague, black...

And Mathilde's healthy mental balance was disturbed. This young and healthy woman, with her rather vulgar aspirations, had fallen in love with him because her nature expected to...