Erik Dorn

In a dining-room of the city known as the Blue Inn, Anna Dorn sat waiting for her husband. Opposite her a laughing-eyed man was talking. She listened without intelligence. He wa...

Time to get up. An oblong of sunlight squeezing through beneath the drawn blind and slapping itself boldly on the gloomy carpet ... "shame on all sleepy heads. Here's another da...

In and out of the crowded courtrooms of the city George Hazlitt pursued his career. Buried in the babble of words, his voice sounded from day to day with a firm, self-conscious...

Warren Lockwood was a man who wrote novels. He had lived in the Middle West until he was thirty-five and begun his writing at his desk in a real-estate office of which he had be...

Erik Dorn laughed as he walked swiftly through the snow in the street. It seemed to him he had been laughing incessantly for a week, and that he would continue to laugh forever....

The world in which Erik Dorn lived was compounded of many surfaces. Of them Anna, his wife, was the most familiar. It was a familiarity of absorption. Weeks of intimacy passed b...

A kaleidoscope of cities. A new garrulity. Words like busy little brooms sweeping up after a war. A world of foreigners. Europe was running about with empty pockets and a cracke...

When she was a child she used to see a face in the dark as she was falling asleep. It was crude and misshapen, and leered at her, filling her heart with fear. Later, people had...

Everything the same as it had been. As if he had stepped out of the office for a walk around the block and come back. But a sameness that had lost its familiarity. Old furniture...

It was dawn when they awoke. Rachel opened her eyes first. A lassitude filled her. She remained quiet for moments and then sat up and stared at Erik. His face was flushed and he...

A rabble of dictators, ministerial fledglings, freshly sprouted governors, organizers, departmental heads, scurried through the dimly lighted corridors of the old Palais. Dorn,...

The new garrulity that had seemed strange to Dorn lost its strangeness. It became the victrola phrases of a bewildered diplomacy. But the diplomacy was not confined to frock-coa...

They walked together down the avenue. Dorn felt a return of interest in himself. Introspection bored him. His insincerity made self thought meaningless. Listeners, however, revi...

The employees of the editorial room--a loft-like chamber crazily crowded with desks, tables, cabinets, benches, files, typewriters; lighted by a smoke-darkened sun and the dim g...

At his desk in _The Cry_ office Tesla was preparing the April issue of the magazine for the printer. It was night. A garrulous political poet named Myers was revising proofs at...

A calm had fallen upon Erik Dorn, an unconsciousness of self. He sprawled through the sunny days, staring at the sea with Rachel or walking alone to the fishing-boats at the oth...

There were people in New York who came to Erik Dorn and said: "Tell us about Europe. And Germany. Is it really true that...." As if there were some inner revelation--a few preci...

" ... and to-night I remember you are beautiful, and I desire you. My arms are empty and there is nothing for my eyes to look at. Are you still afraid. Look, more than a year ha...

Long days. Short days. Outside the window was an ant-hill street. And an ant-hill of days. In the stores they were already selling calendars for the next year. Outside the windo...

She fell to her knees beside the bed and began to weep. He lay quietly listening to her. Bandages around his head. A lunatic with a gun. Yes. Rachel. The man had been in love wi...

In the evening when women stand washing dishes in the kitchens of the city, men light their tobacco and open newspapers. Later, the women gather up the crumpled sheets and read.

The crowds moving through the streets gave Erik Dorn a picture. It was morning. Above the heads of the people the great spatula-topped buildings spread a zigzag of windows, a sc...

In the days that followed Dorn sought to interest himself in the details of the situation. The thing buzzed and gyrated about him, tiring his thought with its innumerable surfac...

The thing hiding in the alleys and shops of the world--the dark, furtive hungers that Russia was thawing into life, emerged on a bright April day in the streets of Munich. Worki...

The sea swarmed under the night. A moon road floated on the long dark swells. From the deck of the throbbing ship Dorn looked steadily toward the circle of moving water. In the...

They were in their bedroom undressing. Outside, the night rustled with an approaching storm. On the closed windows the rain began a rattle of water. A wind filled the darkness.

The thing that had been buried in Emil Tesla and that used to rumble under his fawning words, had come to life one day with two men twisting his wrists and hammering at his unco...

"Yes, dear, I know. It sort of frightens me, too. But," she laughed quietly, "there is nothing to be frightened about. He didn't give any address or I would have written him tel...

There were four men in the smoking-compartment. They were discussing the end of the war. Dorn listened inattentively. He was remembering another ride to Rachel. Looking out of a...

An old man sat in the shadows of the summer night. From a veranda chair he looked at the stars. He wore a white beard, and his eyes, grown small with age, watered continually as...

Rachel, removing her heavy coat, walked briskly to the grate fire burning in the rear of the studio. She stood looking into the flames and rubbing the cold out of her hands.

A time of singing. Songs on the lips of crowds. Lights in their eyes. High-pitched, garbled words, brass bands, flags, speeches.... Mine eyes have seen the coming of the glory o...

They sat in the compartment of the train crawling into Munich. The Baron drooped with sleep. Dorn stared wearily out of the window. Springtime. A beginning of green in the field...

At ten o'clock the courts of the city crowd up. The important gentlemen who devote themselves to sending people to jail and to preventing them from being sent to jail, appear wi...

"That damned Warren Lockwood led me astray," he smiled. He dried his face and came toward her. She dropped to the floor beside him as he sat down and pressed her cheeks against...

It was early evening when his son entered the room. Dorn paused and looked at the silent figure in the chair. The old man raised his head as if he had been spoken to and muttere...