terrible eyes they were. For ten years I had looked into them and
had known them better than my own eyes, and now there was something
new in them which I am unable define. I would have called it pride,
but there was something different in them, something new, entirely
new. I took her hand; it was cold. She grasped my hand firmly and
there was something new, something I had not known before, in her
handclasp.

She had never before clasped my hand as she did this time.

"How long?" I asked.

"About an hour already. Your brother has gone away. He was
apparently afraid that you would not let him go, so he went away
quietly. But I saw it."

It was true then; the time had arrived. I rose, and, for some
reason, spent a long time washing myself, as was my wont in the
morning before going to work, and my wife held the light. Then we
put out the light and walked over to the window overlooking the
street. It was spring; it was May, and the air that came in from the
open window was such as we had never before felt in that old, large
city. For several days the factories and the roads had been idle;
and the air, free from smoke, was filled with the fragrance of the
fields and the flowering gardens, perhaps with that of the dew. I do
not know what it is that smells so wonderfully on spring nights when
I go out far beyond the outskirts of the city. Not a lantern, not a
carriage, not a single sound of the city over the unconcerned stony
surface; if you had closed your eyes you would really have thought
that you were in a village. There a dog was barking. I had never