Read "The Breaking of the Storm" by Friedrich Spielhagen online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
He stood sunk in the deepest thought, his slender white fingers stroking his dark beard.
"It is amusing to be the only well-informed man amongst the ignorant; amusing and sad. I feel it for the first time, now that I can no longer share my thoughts and plans with her. She has brought it on herself, and she is heaping wrong upon wrong. A little while ago and the measure was nearly full. If a spark of the old love remained in her she must have taken it differently. That pallor, that terror, that ‘no! ' at the mere vision of what formerly her soul thirsted for, as the thirsty traveller in the desert longs for the stream of water in the oasis. Only because it was a vision? Because it was not the truth? And if it were made truth? " Giraldi slowly paced the apartment. "His parents are dead, the monk may be disposed of, and the handsome youth can have no objection; he is vain and false, and in love; any one of the three would suffice to induce him to play the part. And then the likeness -- it is not very striking, but she cannot convict me of falsehood when she sees him; and she must see him."