The Desire of Life

The clouds kept climbing continually behind the hill of the Maloja, suspended by an impetuous wind, which sometimes grew quiet for a while and then rose again violently and rude...

A strong, fresh wind was coming from the deep, raising the waters of the Adriatic in long waves of incomparable light green, to hurl them, as they curved, rolled, and almost cur...

All the morning, as every day, the bell of the entrance door of Vittorio Lante's pretty but modest apartments in Via de' Prefetti had done nothing but ring: and his housekeeper,...

After the snow of the 26th of August a pure sky was resplendent in vain in the Upper Engadine, an exaltation for the eye and the imagination; in vain a wondrous golden sun enliv...

In the Catholic church of St. Moritz Bad the first Mass on a Sunday is said at six. The bell of the rather lofty tower sounded the call to the faithful once only, and feebly, as...

Again, on the 23rd of August, the whole Engadine was encompassed and surrounded by rain, not one of those rough, short showers of the high mountains, which pass from valley to v...

In the rather gloomy ante-chamber, papered as it was in old green myrtle, and austerely furnished in dark carved wood, the electric light was lit, but shaded by a milky, opaque...

At midday, before and after luncheon, the telephones at all the hotels and villas did nothing but ring in their little cupboards, and in German, English, and French--especially...

Nearly all the women and girls who had come that evening to the great ball at the "Kulm" were dressed in white. In the immense hall that--with its richly painted but very low ce...

Unfailingly every lady who entered, in all the splendour of her ball dress, stopped a moment at the threshold of the hall of the Palace Hotel, to give a glance at the hall, whic...

The great vault of the sky was ascending, as they were ascending, from the level of the Val Bregaglia; it passed over their heads and kept rising, as their eyes contemplated it...

Smiling softly and showing her little flashing teeth, in a mouth as red as a carnation and whimsically opened, Mabel Clarke was counting with the point of her umbrella the boxes...

"Hoop-la!" cried Mabel Clarke joyously. And bending over the neck of her yellow-dun horse she urged him to a trot; Vittorio Lante also brought his horse, a powerful black, to a...

The large clock with face all of blue and hours marked in gold, which adorns the slender, upright spire of the English church, sounded ten; its grave and harmonious tones spread...

The girl remained impassive; Lucio Sabini bowed, in token of consent. The carriage which an hour ago had brought all four to the hill of the Maloja and had waited for them there...

Thoughtfully and dreamily Lucio Sabini was dallying, stretched in his arm-chair beside his writing-table; a newspaper had fallen from his hand and lay opened on the carpet, his...

In the embrasure of a window the tall figure of Otto von Raabe was silhouetted more darkly against the shadow of the night; he stooped a little to reply in a low voice to the su...

From the 2nd of August the Palace Hotel, which is the supremely characteristic, fashionable, and snobbish hotel of the whole Engadine in general, and the two St. Moritzes in par...

On the golf links that extend from the extremity of the Hôtel Kulm, climbing and descending the whole of the hill of Charnadüras, and which are so green that not even the player...

"I am here, dearie," murmured her mother, even more softly. Annie Clarke lay stretched upon a large sofa that filled up a whole corner of the room; her head, which had been care...