The scorpion

It was from Aunt Antonia that I first heard of her. Aunt Antonia was a very pious and respectable lady, and lies and slander were alien to her. She saw things with a sharp eye,...

Olga and Myra walked briskly side by side in silence for a while. Myra should long ago have turned off if she wanted to take the shortest way home. She observed with some concer...

“Little stupid,” she said, “that has another significance altogether. I must be a scorpion because I have a poison sting. Because my wits must be ‘like scorpion stings.’ Someone...

But one afternoon Emmie burst into the room just as Fannie was telling Myra the highly exciting story of a letter to her which her mother had opened. Myra was not especially cle...

After dinner, during which only Uncle George had spoken, extolling in loud and well-rounded periods the beauties of the little city and the virtues of its children, Myra finally...

Myra took full advantage of these liberties and began preparations for her flight. Day or night, she had never had any other intention and her constant preoccupation with such p...

Myra unpacked her suitcase, spread night-gowns on the bed, set bottles and boxes on the wash-table. Olga walked about noiselessly, whistling with soft, sweet flute-tones. She st...

Or if Olga would return and say, “Don’t go! Don’t leave me! Let us go somewhere else, anywhere they can’t find us. Prove to me how much you love me: give up everything for me! W...

Then Myra hated them both—Aunt Emily and Olga—with a terrible hatred. But she hated Olga the more—Olga who had thrown her down where Aunt Emily could trample her, Olga who had t...

While Peterkin was speaking, Myra had a curious feeling that she was living over in a few minutes and with the most powerful intensity, the last six months of her life. It seeme...

“Oh, more than that,” said Myra, “it isn’t done with that alone. Don’t you remember what the little mermaid yearned for, why she let them cut off her tongue, why she suffered a...

Mrs. Breslauer, a buxom lady, with strikingly painted eyebrows, had discovered a corset of white tricot under a heap of other things on the bed, and she must absolutely know whe...

When Myra stood before Gisela and Mara had mentioned names and made a gesture of presentation, there was that strange feeling again—“What is the purpose of it all? What will hap...

Beside her sat Ulrich Zeeden, who in his haste to spring up and come out from behind the table imperilled the tea service, which caused both John and Myra to clutch frantically...

“I don’t know.” Myra reflected seriously. “I think that I lied a good deal as a child, at least as long as I was in the hands of my mentors. But it was cheerless and unimaginati...

“I will describe to you one case, one out of thousands. One case out of the thousands where the criminal goes unapprehended. I knew a family, a well-to-do and respected family,...

They ate lunch under a friendly enticing red roof, and crossing the silvery lake, wandered toward the station. At times they were boisterous, at times sentimental, but always co...

She bent double but she could not escape the incessant gnawing pain. She wished she could get away, but she knew she did not have the courage or the strength to pack a suitcase....

Myra was a little anxious on her account. She looked so happy, and apparently worshipped her husband so idolatrously. If only she had finished with her hours of pain! The wish b...

“Improper? Oh, no, it’s all right,” she said magnanimously. “You only addressed me familiarly through an error. You are so accustomed to having visitors whom you address familia...

“Comrade,” she thought, “a beautiful, a dear word. Comrade! I would like to be that, and I can be. Comradeship. That is my strength. But nobody has ever required it of me yet. I...