Fiction

Excerpt from Fiction

Is it not perfect happiness when all three are united in one  husband, wife and Love is the whole world, love is the most precious of jewels. Love is what men will give their very souls, their very lives, for. Many another such passage might be quoted which Dostoievsky has put into the mouths of drunkards, epileptics, misers and prostitutes. In one of the stories in this volume we have the remorseful ravings of a man who, though intrinsically mean of soul, has loved greatly and with his whole heart. Under the in?uence of this true and sterling passion he, a sordid moneylender, has learnt to be at once generous and a hero, despite the fact that with his opinionated severity he has broken his wife's heart, and driven her to suicide. In another of these stories we read of the ruin of an unbalanced nature which passes, through the throes of a purely amorous affection, to its undoing. Lastly we read how a poor outcast upon whom a half-crazed, embittered cynic has planned to vent his wrath and disappointment with the world catches eagerly at what she believes to be the true and generous love which he is offering her, and, in doing so, reveals, as in a ?ash, all the higher, better and purer nature which still lurks within her woman's soul. That tender soul, yearning for: what fate has denied it, offers the man its all; and he  he turns upon and rends her, though, in the act, he rends also himself. It is a terrible picture  perhaps some might say too terrible. To such persons one might almost imagine the author retorting: Do not look at it, then. Continue. Good people, to be  comfortable.