"No, never," he said.

She let her hand fall from his arm and said no more. He crossed the
hall to the door, then turned once more. She was standing motionless
on the same spot and looking at him with lifeless eyes. He advanced
one step and opened his arms toward her; then, with a violent effort,
he turned away and so passed out of the door.

Outside the world lay bathed in morning light, the drops of pearly dew
caught on the spiders' webs glistened in the first rays of the rising
sun. He never looked back; he walked rapidly onward; behind him the
peaceful farmstead gradually disappeared from view as out in front of
him rose the great wide world.

* * * * *




THE OLD MAN



The moon had ceased to shine in through the window-panes, and it had
grown quite dark; but the old man still sat in his arm-chair with
folded hands and gazed before him into the emptiness of the room.

Gradually. the murky darkness around him dissolved away before his
eyes and changed into a broad dark lake; one black wave after another