by Stefan Zweig
She has fallen silent now, and her face is suffused with Bacchanalian beauty. The glow in her eyes has become deep and menacing, and the red in her cheeks burns more and more warmly.
There is a profound silence, broken only by the monotonous rhythmical song of the glittering waves breaking on the tiers of the terrace below, as if casting itself on a beloved breast.
Then he says softly, as if to himself, “But what about love?”
She heard that. A slight smile comes to her lips.
“Do you still have all the ideals, all the ideals that you took to that distant world with you? Are they all still intact, or have some of them died or withered away? Haven’t they been torn out of you by force and flung in the dirt, where thousands of wheels carrying vehicles to their owners’ destination in life crushed them? Or have you lost none of them?”
He nods sadly, and says no more.
Suddenly he carries her hand to his lips and kisses it in silence. Then he says, in a warm voice, “Goodbye, and I wish you well.”
She returns his farewell firmly and honestly. She feels no shame at having unveiled her deepest secret and shown her soul to a man who has been a stranger to her for years. Smiling, she watches him go, thinks of the words he said about love, and the past comes up with quiet, inaudible steps to intervene between her and the present. And suddenly she thinks that he could have given her life its direction, and her ideas paint that strange notion in bright colours.
And slowly, slowly, imperceptibly, the smile on her dreaming lips dies away.
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Original text © Williams Verlag AG Zurich
English translation © Anthea Bell
Letter from an Unknown Woman first published in German as
Brief einer Unbekannten in 1922
A Story Told in Twilight first published in German as
Geschichte in der Dämmerung in 1911
The Debt Paid Late first published in German as
Vergessene Träume in 1900
Forgotten Dreams first published in German as
Die spät bezahlte Schuld in 1982
This ebook edition first published by Pushkin Press in 2013
ISBN 978 1 782270 09 6
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Set in 11 on 15 Monotype Baskerville
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