The World's Illusion, Volume 2 (of 2): Ruth

“The deed itself is hidden in mystery and twilight, and is described with rather repulsive details. Last Wednesday evening Yaminsky was dining with friends in a side room at Cub...

“I knew that,” said Christian. “I knew where Michael had been; he confessed it himself. The girl’s death was reported to me this morning. Nevertheless I thank you for the troubl...

“No,” Weikhardt answered, “it is not. You don’t see far enough. Things cohere together far more closely than you think. One body, one element, one stream--each is more interwove...

Memories of Christian’s childhood were her refuge. She lived them over in imagination: how Christian as a child of five had lain in bed with her. Early in the morning the nurse...

Crammon said to Letitia: “I didn’t know that this Judith was one of those soulless creatures of porcelain. It was always my opinion that the phrases concerning the superior tend...

Letitia laughed. She regarded him with a mixture of irony and shyness. But as she stood before him in her frock of soft, pale yellow silk, her neck and bosom radiating an ivory...

The tea-gown of white lace which the dancer wore--experts declared each square inch of it to have the value of a provincial governor’s annual pay--was vivid as a fantastic paste...

“No peace is left in me. From an invisible wound in the world’s body the blood keeps flowing. I cry out for a vessel to receive it, but no one brings me such a vessel. Or are th...

She arrived at five o’clock. The darkness had fallen. They went into Karen’s old rooms, since Michael was in Christian’s. To the latter’s surprise the boy had suddenly expressed...

Karen went on: “He comes here and sits down and looks around. He sits down and opens a book and studies. Then he puts the book away and looks around again. Then he notices me su...

Evening came upon her, then night, but it brought no sleep. The pearls were in bed with her, close to her breast, warm by her skin. She felt them to assure herself of their pres...

“After that,” she went on, “people began to say, ‘Lass, your eyes are too bold.’ Well, they was. I couldn’t tell everybody why. The vicar drivelled about some secret shame and t...

“You see--it is your race. It is, I do not deny it, the same race which I have always.... Well, it’s speaking mildly to say that I’ve always hated the Jews. Merely to scent a Je...

There lived in the capital city an aged and childless couple, Señor and Señora Herzales. The old man was a brother of Doña Barbara, and his wealth would, upon his death, fall to...

Dr. Voltolini continued: “Until two years ago I practised at Riedberg, near Freiwaldau, in Austrian Silesia. The town is several miles from the frontier of Prussia. Quite near i...

Christian sat down at the table and rested his head on his hand. “Yes,” he said softly. “Yes. But there the great difficulty arises. I cannot fix the boundary between necessity...

Frau Wahnschaffe now turned her full face upon Christian so slowly that the motion had the air of marionette’s. “You are sorry,” she murmured. “Ah, yes. I scarcely expected even...

With lowered head he went a pace nearer to Niels Heinrich, who remained quite still, and continued, while a veiled smile hovered over his lips: “Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t...

Karen got up and walked up and down. “That’s the way things are,” she muttered, and with grim satisfaction her eyes wandered about the elegant room. “First on the box and then i...

Every passing second heightened her unspeakable consternation. Her limbs trembled. She sat down on the other side of the room. The lad had his back turned to her, and she observ...

He took a room in Demminer Street with a grocer named Kahle. The room was immediately over the shop. The big sign saying “Eggs, Butter, Cheese” almost covered the low window; co...

The house, sunk into the treacherous immobility of its nights, appeared to him in the guise of a monstrous skeleton, consisting of countless walls and beds and doors steeped in...

Suddenly he had a vision. A landscape appeared before him. There was a path bordered by tall poplars in autumnal foliage, a path of mud, of black morass. On either side of it th...

On a beautiful day of May he and his friends had reached the city of Acquapendente in the Abruzzi. They had really intended to proceed to Viterbo, but the little mountain town p...

She felt even Susan to be in the way. When the woman crept about her in foolish anxiety, she sent her out of the room. She desired not to be addressed nor to be beheld; she want...

“I shall tell you that,” said Christian, with an expression that had grown more meditative from minute to minute. “A human being like this Joachim Heinzen was not capable of kil...

He explained that certain individuals, including physicians, were willing to serve as witnesses and to co-operate. Yet actual internment was an extreme measure. If it should fai...

“My dear Privy Councillor:--Although it is some time since we have had the pleasure of working under direct orders from you, yet in the hope of renewed relations between us, we...

The widow Engelschall had long had her suspicions of Karen. Whenever she entered the room Karen grew restless, avoided her glance, and pulled the covers up to her chin. The wido...

“Too bad! Ah, well! The dewy moisture of the eye, countess, is the sort of thing you mustn’t expect of me; I haven’t the required gift. I found the little girl sympathetic, very...

Curled up in a wooden chair by the oven lay a small, white cat. She had run in a few days before, and had made herself at home since no one drove her out. Christian had always d...

Produced by Henry Flower and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archiv...

“It was, to say the least, a very weighty and significant transformation,” said Johanna, cutting the buns in half and buttering them. Her gestures were of an exquisitely calcula...