Louis Couperus

“ In this record of an ancient crime, buried deep in the hearts of the aged pair of lovers who committed it, and yet poisoning the lives of their descendants to the third and fourth generation, there is the austerity and inevitability of Aeschylean tragedy. ”

“ Only Elly, Lot's young wife, longs for "great, faraway things," and feels within her the call "to strive as far as she could," finding unendurable the aimless life which contents the man whose soul is "neutral tinted," who is incapable of "scarlet things," yet at the last finds himself hiding "an innocent secret * * * torturing as a hidden, gnawing disease."
It is, however, with two very old people, the man 93, the woman 97, and with a secret which was very far from innocent, that the novel is principally concerned. ”