Page:A Leaf in the Storm.djvu/229

 within whilst he played on his mountain flute to the people at the doorways in the street below.

"Is it better to go out and see the stars and the leaves ourselves, or to stay in-doors and make all these forget, the misfortune of not seeing them?" said Lili, on one of those evenings when the warmth and the sunset almost allured her to draw the flute from her husband's hands and give him his hat instead; and then she looked down into the narrow road, at the opposite houses, at the sewing-girls stitching by their little windows, at the pale students studying their sickly lore with scalpel and with skeleton, at the hot dusty little children at play on the asphalte sidewalk, at the sorrowful darkened casements behind which she knew beds of sickness or of paralyzed old age were hidden—looked at all this from behind my blossoms, and then gave up the open air and the evening stroll that were so dear a pastime to her, and whispered to René, "Play, or they will be disappointed."

And he played, instead of going to the debating-club in the room round the corner.

"He has ceased to be a patriot," grumbled the old vine. "It is always so with every man when once he has loved a woman!"

Myself, I could not see that there was less patriotism in breathing the poetry of sound into the