harsh and strange. Swooning with fear, it offered itself up!
What a huge monster must the dog have seemed to it! And yet it could not stay on its high branch out of danger…. A force stronger than its will flung it down.
My Tresor stood still, drew back…. Clearly he too recognised this force.
I hastened to call off the disconcerted dog, and went away, full of reverence.
Yes; do not laugh. I felt reverence for that tiny heroic bird, for its impulse of love.
Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.
THE SKULLS
A sumptuous, brilliantly lighted hall; a number of ladies and gentlemen.
All the faces are animated, the talk is lively…. A noisy conversation is being carried on about a famous singer. They call her divine, immortal…. O, how finely yesterday she rendered her last trill!
And suddenly—as by the wave of an enchanter's wand—from every head and from every face, slipped off the delicate covering of skin, and instantaneously exposed the deadly whiteness of skulls, with here and there the leaden shimmer of bare jaws and gums.
With horror I beheld the movements of those jaws and gums; the turning, the glistening in the light of the lamps and candles, of those lumpy bony balls, and the rolling in them of other smaller balls, the balls of the meaningless eyes.
I dared not touch my own face, dared not glance at myself in the glass.
And the skulls turned from side to side as before…. And with their former noise, peeping like little red rags out of the grinning teeth, rapid tongues lisped how marvellously, how inimitably the immortal … yes, immortal … singer had rendered that last trill!
THE WORKMAN AND THE MAN WITH WHITE HANDS
A DIALOGUE
WORKMAN. Why do you come crawling up to us? What do ye want? You're none of us…. Get along!
MAN WITH WHITE HANDS. I am one of you, comrades!
THE WORKMAN. One of us, indeed! That's a notion! Look at my hands. D'ye see how dirty they are? And they smell of muck, and of pitch—but yours, see, are white. And what do they smell of?
THE MAN WITH WHITE HANDS (
THE WORKMAN (
THE MAN WITH WHITE HANDS. Yes; iron it is. For six long years I wore chains on them.
THE WORKMAN. And what was that for, pray?
THE MAN WITH WHITE HANDS. Why, because I worked for your good; tried to set free the oppressed and the ignorant; stirred folks up against your oppressors; resisted the authorities…. So they locked me up.
THE WORKMAN. Locked you up, did they? Serve you right for resisting!
THE SAME WORKMAN TO ANOTHER. I say, Pete…. Do you remember, the year before last, a chap with white hands talking to you?
THE OTHER WORKMAN. Yes;… what of it?
THE FIRST WORKMAN. They're going to hang him to-day, I heard say; that's the order.
THE SECOND WORKMAN. Did he keep on resisting the authorities?
THE FIRST WORKMAN. He kept on.
THE SECOND WORKMAN. Ah!… Now, I say, mate, couldn't we get hold of a bit of the rope they're going to hang him with? They do say, it brings good luck to a house!
THE FIRST WORKMAN. You're right there. We'll have a try for it, mate.
THE ROSE
The last days of August…. Autumn was already at hand.
The sun was setting. A sudden downpour of rain, without thunder or lightning, had just passed rapidly over our wide plain.
The garden in front of the house glowed and steamed, all filled with the fire of the sunset and the deluge of rain.
She was sitting at a table in the drawing-room, and, with persistent dreaminess, gazing through the half- open door into the garden.
I knew what was passing at that moment in her soul; I knew that, after a brief but agonising struggle, she was at that instant giving herself up to a feeling she could no longer master.
All at once she got up, went quickly out into the garden, and disappeared.
An hour passed … a second; she had not returned.
Then I got up, and, getting out of the house, I turned along the walk by which—of that I had no doubt—she had gone.
All was darkness about me; the night had already fallen. But on the damp sand of the path a roundish object could be discerned—bright red even through the mist.
I stooped down. It was a fresh, new-blown rose. Two hours before I had seen this very rose on her bosom.
I carefully picked up the flower that had fallen in the mud, and, going back to the drawing-room, laid it on the table before her chair.
And now at last she came back, and with light footsteps, crossing the whole room, sat down at the table.
Her face was both paler and more vivid; her downcast eyes, that looked somehow smaller, strayed rapidly in happy confusion from side to side.
She saw the rose, snatched it up, glanced at its crushed, muddy petals, glanced at me, and her eyes, brought suddenly to a standstill, were bright with tears.
'What are you crying for?' I asked.
'Why, see this rose. Look what has happened to it.'
Then I thought fit to utter a profound remark.
'Your tears will wash away the mud,' I pronounced with a significant expression.
'Tears do not wash, they burn,' she answered. And turning to the hearth she flung the rose into the dying flame.
'Fire burns even better than tears,' she cried with spirit; and her lovely eyes, still bright with tears, laughed boldly and happily.
I saw that she too had been in the fire.
