Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/104

 to press upon her in all the forms of its unappeasable cravings. He who knows not what hunger is has never yet wrestled in his soul about the dignity of man. Hunger has its awful tragedies as soon as it steps out of the mean where it rather tends to comedy. If a man feels even the merest necessities of existence are failing him, he too often ceases to believe that he is a man. Hunger has a roar so cruel that it deafens all else within us, love, nobility, self-sacrifice, magnanimity, even disdain of the populace. Ay, even the dignity of man shrinks into nothingness. When growing plants have neither soil nor moisture, it is hard to expect flowers from them. Do not, then, condemn as debased creatures those, who have thrown away their dignity through the pression of hunger, do not condemn women who from the same cause have prostituted their bodies. So long as society closes its doors to their cries, it has no right to pass judgment on such people, and it judges harshly if it condemns them.

Where had Karla now to turn when hunger began to oppress her? Should she beg?

The thought horrified her like a sudden vision of death, and perhaps at the moment she would sooner have died than have allowed herself to beg. Must she again go among people, when only a moment ago she had felt relieved to lose sight of them? Must she learn the prayer of poverty and disclose her wounds to the world that it might laugh at her without offering her relief? Must she go among strangers and force herself upon their generosity with phrases which nowadays every one can get by rote? She did not falter but determined that she would rather bear hunger than have any dealings with her fellow-creatures.

But one thought seized upon her with such force that she could not repress it and for some time she cherished it with a certain feeling of satisfaction. Havel occurred to her: all the eager words of youth, in which a little year ago he had depicted his passion for her, came back to her mind. She believed in the genuineness of his passion for her and felt herself near to him although marriage and fate had separated her from him.

She felt his warm breath and his bright eyes upon her as though he himself had come to meet her and she had called out to him. Her image dominated his fancy perhaps in a manner a thousand time more powerful than when she still thought about him with perfect frankness. Besides his personal charms she adorned him with generosity and seemed to see his arms thrown open into which she had only to throw herself. If she went to him, he