Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/111

 is there no road to the sunshine? Might not civilization empty these dungeons and might not all stand in the light?

But society chases the beggar to the dens; it monopolizes the light for itself and leaves only rags, filth, and squalor.

Karla shuddered all over at the spectacle. Something impelled her to hurry away, but the wonder which overruled her was so powerful that she had not the strength to rise. She felt greater unhappiness than all these present, for she had not yet reached a point at which she could with a debauched conscience lose herself in the ravishing creed which swallows both feelings and consciousness. And yet she could not judge them. Society had always cruelly rid itself of them: they stood within their rights then when they turned to ridicule everything that society holds dear and sacred.

One of the male beggars observed that Karla looked as though she did not enjoy her company. He stepped up to her and with a look of cruel candour began to address her:—

“Ah, ha! What has brought thee among us? Thou art young and yet thou wouldst not chum with our quality. Thou art pretty, and yet knowest of nothing better to do with thy beauty than to beg. I ask it of all you—shall we put up with beauty and youth? And what do I see—thou art dressed as thou wouldst hail us to a feast. I ask it of all of you: are we to put up with dresses that make it appear as though the world went well with us so that even these last doors shall be closed against us? Are we to put up with dress such as this which will drive us from house and comfort and shut us out from victuals, from warmth, from everything?”

This beggar threw himself on Karla and at a jerk tore her dress from top to bottom. Then he turned triumphantly to his comrades who gloated with coarse and brutal laughter over the stripped and humiliated Karla.

All the wrath and indignation which slumbered within her took fire at this insult. Was, then, the sentiment of respect for women no longer theirs?

Karla arose and ran out of the house into the streets in all the uncertainty of the weather and in the darkness of night. She did not measure her steps, nor had she the least idea whither she betook herself. It seemed to her as though she was rescuing her very life from the knife of the executioner. The ground lost its steadiness under her, the houses changed into haunts of brigands and those who rested in comfort seemed to pour on her a hissing stream of darts and poison. Even that pink darling in her arms