Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/101

 confident it would do so and thought there was still plenty of time to get up to make the trial.

It had already grown dark and Karla sat on the doorstep. The doorkeeper [domovnicadomovnice [sic]] came and pitied her very much. She called her her good mistress and invited her at least for that night to her own room saying that she would arrange that she and her child slept comfortably, for out of doors they could not remain. Karla thanked her and replied curtly that there was no necessity. Karla fully believed that there was no necessity and that it would be foolish to quarter herself upon the housekeeper when she had herself plenty of comfort behind her closed doors. The housekeeper without doubt interpreted this differently and as she went up the staircase muttered loud enough to be heard that pride would soon have a fall.

It was night. The moon shone in a clear sky and the stars twinkled like living eyes. Through the house complete quiet reigned: in the window the lights were extinguished and everything rested in the calm peace of sleep. It horrified Karla to see darkness in her own dwelling and when she had not extinguished the lights herself.

She determined to light them again, she took hold of the latch, as she believed, but the locked doors were harder than her weak hand. She fell back on the doorstep covering her little daughter with everything she had, rested her head against the door, hoping that would yield next morning which at present opposed her.

She slept sufficiently peacefully. She had not yet a suspicion of the truth that she was a beggar.

Early the next day the housekeeper hurried to her with a message from the master of the house to say that she must be off and be gone from the doorstep. What more she added on her account Karla did not listen to. But it seemed to her as if the whole affair was a mere mockery. She turned from the housekeeper in disdain and never answered her a word.

But when day had fairly dawned there did seem to dawn in her mind also some consciousness of the terrible change in her fortunes.

Already at the first glimmer of light she started from her sleep; she thought for a moment that she still slept in a room and that the cradle stood just in the same place where it had hitherto stood. But when her little daughter began to wail in her arms, the cradle vanished from her memory and in place of a soft couch she Rh