Now he saw her face near, her shining eyes, and in the darkness she
looked younger than in the room, and even her old childish expression
seemed to have come back to her. And indeed she was looking at him
with naïve curiosity, as though she wanted to get a closer view and
understanding of the man who had loved her so ardently, with such
tenderness, and so unsuccessfully; her eyes thanked him for that
love. And he remembered all that had been, every minute detail; how
he had wandered about the cemetery, how he had returned home in the
morning exhausted, and he suddenly felt sad and regretted the past.
A warmth began glowing in his heart.

"Do you remember how I took you to the dance at the club?" he asked.
"It was dark and rainy then. . ."

The warmth was glowing now in his heart, and he longed to talk, to
rail at life. . . .

"Ech!" he said with a sigh. "You ask how I am living. How do we
live here? Why, not at all. We grow old, we grow stout, we grow
slack. Day after day passes; life slips by without colour, without
expressions, without thoughts. . . . In the daytime working for
gain, and in the evening the club, the company of card-players,
alcoholic, raucous-voiced gentlemen whom I can't endure. What is
there nice in it?"

"Well, you have work--a noble object in life. You used to be so
fond of talking of your hospital. I was such a queer girl then; I
imagined myself such a great pianist. Nowadays all young ladies
play the piano, and I played, too, like everybody else, and there
was nothing special about me. I am just such a pianist as my mother