The Song of Songs

When Lilly was just fourteen her father, Kilian Czepanek, the music-master, suddenly disappeared. He had been giving lessons all day as usual, cursing the heat--which was terrif...

Kilian Czepanek did not come back. Of course, there were kindly-intentioned friends who said they had always foreseen it would happen; indeed it was a wonder that a man, so divi...

In these days Lilly bloomed into a tall, well-developed girl, who carried her satchel of books through the streets to school with the air of a princess. She was generally dresse...

Spring brought renewed hope and promise of brighter times for Frau Czepanek. So certain was she that in a very short time now her husband would return, that she determined to gi...

"Yes, my dear young lady," said the distinguished lawyer, Herr Doktor Pieper, "I have been appointed your guardian, and have accepted the post because I considered it my duty. A...

Frau Asmussen had two daughters, who had run away for the third time. All the neighbours knew it, and Lilly was given full particulars almost directly she set foot in the badly-...

It was a spring-like evening in March, with bright sunshine. The last grimy heaps of snow lying along the gutters had melted into radiant paddles, and a shower of silvery drops...

She continued to enjoy this happiness. It nestled in the cobwebby corners, perched on the books, spun golden threads from beam to beam, and it rode astride on every shaft of sun...

Without giving a hint of their coming beforehand, they suddenly appeared in the library, gave Lilly an astonished stare, and asked her to pay their cab as they had no change. Li...

It was in the twilight of a rainy November day. Every roof dripped, and grey drops slid down the iron railings of the terrace in endless succession to splash into the pools on t...

An imperious stamping before the door, and the bell sounded more sharply than usual. No, she had not seen this person before. Here was no frivolous young lieutenant, nor one of...

This was the moment in which Lilly's hopes and wondering astonishment reached their climax. Could it be Lilly Czepanek to whom all this was happening, or had she changed places...

The train rumbled on through the night, showers of sparks flew up from the engine. When it was fed by the stoker, clouds of fire illuminated the darkness, and you saw in a flash...

They passed Berlin without stopping, because the colonel had no desire to encounter his military friends so soon after his _mesalliance_. From here in three hours they reached D...

They arrived at Lischnitz in the small hours of Sunday morning. The colonel had forbidden any ceremonious reception, so that there was nothing to be seen in the faint moonlight...

The finches were the worst behaved, though the tomtits and the nuthatches ran them very close in the noise they made. As for the blackbirds and thrushes, they seemed to think th...

One hot August morning Lilly, with her arms full of dewy roses, herself besprinkled with dew from head to toe, entered the dining-room where Anna was making tea, looking lean an...

It was begun in laughter--and with laughter it continued. The next morning when Lilly awoke the objects round her--the lamp, the washstand, the sentimental pictures on the wall-...

For a long time the threshing-machine had been in tune for its autumn song. Far beyond the courtyard, penetrating every wall and hedge, its melancholy hum was now heard. There w...

Then came a delightful time in which she played hide-and-seek with her emotions: drank long draughts from the never-exhausted fount of pleasures anticipated and rehearsed, fulfi...

Fear, the same unreasoning fear that had taken possession of Lilly during her engagement, consumed her again. It paralysed her spine, bound her arms, and made her knees shake an...

Fraeulein von Schwertfeger had said "Good-night" and gone out of Lilly's room about half an hour before midnight one November evening. The colonel had driven off to the town, an...

"You will have concluded from what has happened that all must be over between us. Yes, everything has come to an end. We shall never meet again except at table. If you ask wheth...

She was Lilly Czepanek once more. The divorce suit had been quickly settled. There had been no attempt at defence, and after the colonel's evidence the judges decreed that Lilly...

Among highly recommended "best rooms" in Berlin belonging to apartments which had known much-boasted "better days," and now were let for thirty marks a week, including breakfast...

The street looked the same as usual. Vans rumbled along, housewives crowded in front of the butchers' doing their marketing, young men hurried by with rolls of music and books u...

August Kellermann passed for an artist of considerable reputation, though his pictures did not sell. He was a sharp-witted, sharp-tongued, good-natured person in the middle of t...

Bright times followed. With part of the sum she had earned, Lilly invested in new materials, and soon more sunsets flared behind woods of dried grass and flowers pasted on glass.

The gold-tinted tops of the chestnut-trees faded, and ever wider grew the gaps that autumn's march made in their foliage. At places where a little while ago one saw nothing but...

Lilly's health began to decline. She was troubled with lassitude, headache, palpitations, and sleepless nights. The doctor called in at Herr Dehnicke's instigation was a busy pr...

Once more a new life began for Lilly. It was all over with her dreaded loneliness. Regularly every afternoon Herr Dehnicke arrived at tea-time. But he was "Herr Dehnicke" no lon...

Richard was reluctant to conform to a more temperate manner of life. He was still eager to be seen with Lilly and to have her admired. But little Frau Jula's lecture had really...

The twigs of the chestnuts had again put on their yellow gloves, and many a leaf started on a whirling journey down the canal. Once more the vista of grey water through the open...

While she was staying for a month's change of air in the Riesengebirge she came across a novelist whose name at that time was in everybody's mouth. He was parading his newly acq...

In the early autumn of the same year, Richard took a husband's holiday, and went to Ostend, while Lilly lived cheaply and innocently at a bathing-place on the Baltic, where she...

The next morning, on waking, new troubles faced her. Nobody could be so blind as not to detect, sooner or later, what a rotten existence hers was; least of all he whose refineme...

In human development each spring, as it comes round, has its particular significance and associations. Every spring finds a man different; every one opens old wounds anew, and s...

Lilly got up to go with a little shiver. Here she had nothing to hope for, that was evident. She looked round her, feeling suddenly as if it was all strange to her, and said to...

The big railway station's grimy glass roof was pierced by the peaceful golden light of a June Sabbath morning. Beneath the three bold archways that led into the open air such ma...

It would be incorrect to say that no lucky star shone on Lilly's love at this stage of its development. In the first place, Adele proved, in her born uncommunicativeness and pas...

Now the way was clear, now the new life might be consecrated with rejoicing and thanksgiving. July came and scorched the deserted streets. Those who remained in the aristocratic...

She was to be spared the disgrace of being caught like a criminal, and ultimately, by an act of self-denial, she was to prove that she had not been altogether unworthy of the gr...

The old lampshade-maker of the Neanderstrasse was not a little astonished when her former lodger, whom she had always admired as a smartly-turned-out grand lady, came one day in...

It was the evening of the next day. The carriage, which was bearing Lilly to the most dreaded interview of her life, drew up at the door of the Unter den Linden Restaurant, whic...

The formidable uncle had been won--the last obstacle cleared from her path--the future lay spread out at her feet like a land of milk and honey. The probation looked forward to...

The world wagged on, calmly, merrily, busily, as if nothing had happened, as if nowhere on the ocean of life a lost happiness was drifting every minute farther and farther away,...