Page:Czechoslovak stories.pdf/150

 herself to the rays of the sun, sighing in the very excess of her bliss.

Today the chill breath of the wind rudely touched her hand and brow for the first time and caused her to experience a disagreeable sensation of disappointment, aye, of sorrow.

The young wife turned away from the window with a sense of weariness which she herself scarcely comprehended. She cast her eyes over the room which was still in disorder and filled with the breath of sleep. The air was heavy and the silence of the apartment productive of melancholy and gloom. She stepped to the mirror to begin her toilet and discovered that her eyes were tiredlooking, without their usual luster, her lips were dry and compressed, the pink was gone from her cheeks and her hands were colorless, cold and strangely weak and limp.

She meditated, thinking what kind of a ribbon to put into her hair. Long she pondered on what gown to wear and her thoughts finally reverted to the subject of what to cook for dinner.

She had reflected thus each day for the past four months, at first in a sort of enchanted spell, later with something akin to impatience and now as if from habit or a sense of duty. On the table still stood the cups out of which she and her husband had been drinking coffee, before he departed for his office. They had not conversed much either today or yesterday and had breakfasted with some degree of constraint, for they