Ships that pass in the night

"YES, indeed," remarked one of the guests at the English table, "yes, indeed, we start life thinking that we shall build a great cathedral, a crowning glory to architecture, and...

IN an old second-hand bookshop in London, an old man sat reading Gibbon's History of Rome. He did not put down his book when the postman brought him a letter. He just glanced in...

PETERSHOF was a winter resort for consumptive patients, though, indeed, many people simply needed the change of a bracing climate went there to spend a few months; and came, awa...

WÄRLI, the little hunchback postman, a cheery soul, came whistling up the Kurhaus stairs, carrying with him that precious parcel of registered letters, which gave him the positi...

"They will not care about you, and you will not care about the foreigners. So you will thus be thrown on your own resources, just as I was when I came."

COUNTLESS ages ago a Traveller, much worn with journeying, climbed up the last bit of rough road which led to the summit of a high mountain. There was a temple on that mountain....

THE crisp mountain air and the warm sunshine began slowly to have their effect on Bernardine, in spite of the Disagreeable Man's verdict. She still looked singularly lifeless, a...

BERNARDINE was playing chess one day with the Swedish Professor. On the Kurhaus terrace the guests were sunning themselves, warmly wrapped up to protect themselves from the cold...

AFTER this, scarcely a day passed but Bernardine went to see Mr. Reffold. The most inexperienced eye could have known that he was becoming rapidly worse. Marie, the chambermaid,...

"Now," he answered. "Bring a rug, and also that shawl of yours which is always falling down, and come at once without any fuss. We shall be out for the whole day. What about Mrs...

THERE was a suicide in the Kurhaus one afternoon. A Dutchman, Vandervelt, had received rather a bad account of himself from the doctor a few days previously, and in a fit of dep...

THE Dutchman was buried in the little cemetery which faced the hospital. Marie's tin wreath was placed on the grave. And there the matter ended. The Kurhaus guests recovered fro...

"Now," she said, with great sweetness of manner. And she sat down beside him, drew out her fancy-work, and worked away contentedly. She would have made a charming study of a dev...

THE Doctors in Petershof always said that the caretakers of the invalids were a much greater anxiety than the invalids themselves. The invalids would either get better or die: o...

"Your photograph of that horrid little danseuse whom you like so much," he said, "is simply abominable. She looks like a fury. Well, she may be one for all I know, but in real l...

BERNARDINE had seen Mr. Reffold the previous day. She had sat by his side and held his hand. He had smiled at her many times, but he only spoke once.

SHE had left him alone and neglected for whole hours when he was alive. And now when he was dead, and it probably mattered little to him where he was laid, it was some time befo...

HE had loved her so patiently, and now he felt that he must have his answer. It was only fair to her, and to himself too, that he should know exactly where he stood in her affec...

MANY of the guests in the foreign quarter had made a start downwards into the plains; and the Kurhaus itself, though still well filled with visitors, was every week losing some...

The Disagreeable Man sat in his bedroom trying to read Carpenter's Anatomy. It failed to hold him. Then he looked out of the window, and listened to the dripping of the icicles....

IT was now more than three weeks since Bernardine's return to London. She had gone back to her old home, at her uncle's second-hand book-shop. She spent her time in dusting the...

AFTER the announcement of Mrs. Allitsen's death, Bernardine lived in a misery of suspense. Every day she scanned the obituary, fearing to find the record of another death, feari...

FAILURE and Success passed away from Earth, and found themselves in a Foreign Land. Success still wore her laurel-wreath which she had won on Earth. There was a look of ease abo...

THE morning after Bernardine began her book, she and old Zerviah were sitting together in the shop. He had come from the little inner room where he had been reading Gibbon for t...

Then, with a tenderness which was almost foreign to him, Zerviah told Robert Allitsen how Bernardine had opened her heart to him. She had never loved any one before: but she had...