The Twilight of the Souls

When Gerrit woke that morning, his head felt misty and tired, as though weighed down by a mountain landscape, by a whole stack of mist-mountains that bore heavily upon his brain...

Old Mrs. van Lowe's neighbours thought it a funny thing that, after dinner that evening, the whole family arrived, one after the other, rang the bell and went in, though it was...

"I thank you for coming, mevrouw. It won't do for Ernst to remain here any longer; I should like to take him down to Nunspeet, with one of you, as soon as possible, to-morrow. B...

It was a sultry summer morning and old Mrs. van Lowe sat at the conservatory-window, crying very quietly. She had been crying incessantly now for two long days. After her first...

Marietje sat in Marianne's room staring out at the road. The road, white with dust and sunlight, gleamed through the green of the trees, described a curve and wound round the cr...

Addie was nearly sixteen. He did not grow much in stature, he promised to have the same build as his father, for there was something sturdy and yet delicate, something robust an...

It had gone very, very still. The tired man had dozed off; it seemed as though his nerve-taut limbs had relaxed and lay loose and slack: the thin legs in the wide, creased trous...

That evening, in the lane in front of the little hotel, Addie walked arm-in-arm with his mother. The deepening shadows gathered round them, pierced by the bright light of the la...

Old Mrs. van Lowe had taken a furnished villa at Nunspeet for a few weeks and gone to stay there with Adeline and her flaxen-haired little tribe. She wanted to be near Ernst; an...

Dorine also, Gerrit remembered, had remained in the Hague; and he looked her up at her boarding-house, where she occupied two small, comfortless rooms. He had not seen her for d...

Months had dragged by, when Gerrit, riding out with his squadron, had a meeting that gave him a shock. It was on the Koninginnegracht, one dank autumn morning, dull and dark at...

Yes, Gerrit had quite forgotten the golden glint of those two laughing eyes which he had seemed to recognize; he had only just reflected, lightly and vaguely, that he must have...

No, nobody saw it in him. He could admit that now without hesitation. Around him there appeared to be--he became more and more conscious of it--an opaque sphere, like a material...

He had never quite understood her, not even in the old days. In the old days, as a young officer, he had seen in her a fine girl, a delicious girl, of whom he had been madly ena...

Well, if he treated it like that, he thought, he could reduce the danger to a minimum. He had allowed himself to be taken in; and the only thing now was to disentangle himself,...

It was a steadily grey and rainy winter. A winter without frost, but with endless, endless rains, with a firmament of everlasting clouds hanging over the small, murky town, over...

But she hardly heard the answer, although she grasped it. She shuddered, icy cold. She shivered in her fur cloak. It had rained steadily for days upon the dreary, wintry trees,...

"Oh, you mustn't leave me alone again so long!" Mrs. van Lowe complained. "I can't do without you for so long. It's so dark, so gloomy when you're not here, my Connie!... Yes, y...

The next day, a Sunday, Constance felt a strange longing for youth and laughter, for merry voices and sunny faces. Addie and his father had gone out early, trying the bicycles o...

It was a dismal evening at Mrs. van Lowe's that Sunday. And yet Mamma knew nothing: together with Dorine, she had seen that the maids set out the card-tables, had seen, accordin...

She was surprised to see him come down the stairs, dressed, in uniform. He had spent the morning in bed, but he felt better now; and a feverish excitement acted like a spur. He...

Next morning, in a mist, a drizzly mist, the relations met at the railway-station: Otto van Naghel; Karel; Van Saetzema; Uncle Ruyvenaer, just back from India; Paul; Addie. They...

The gigantic beast wriggled through the sky, from end to end of the vast sky. The beast wobbled the point of its tail slowly up and down over the earth: in the room, above the b...

Gerrit made progress every day. He was now so much better that he sat in a big chair, sat dozing until he sank away in the downy abyss and fell asleep in his chair. He was now s...

It was time that he became the old Gerrit again, bit by bit, you know, bit by bit. The weeks dragged past and the weeks became months and it was time that he became the old Gerr...

Oh, how the twilight was gathering, oh, how it was gathering around him! It was dark now, quite dark; and the fire on the hearth was dying out in the dark, shadowy room. But wha...

It was snowing heavily. For days the great snowflakes had been falling over the small town out of an infinite sky-land, out of infinite sky-plains of infinite snow. And, after a...

"I must say, it's a little absurd of Mamma," said Van der Welcke, on the doorstep. "Must we go to Gerrit's ... in this weather? And has Addie gone too?... Was Mamma as anxious a...

But yonder, in the big, dark, chilly house, the old woman sat waiting. She had sent the maids to bed and told them to put out all the lights, but she herself did not go to bed;...