Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/117

 continually stood before her and appeared in her dreams and yet it would not permit her to approach it. If she had thus encountered Hurka the first time they met, it is possible he would have won her affection, it is possible they would have been still entirely his own.

She could not sleep. When she had rearranged the violets which yet remained for Havel’s little daughter she looked at Havel’s window, which still illuminated threw a dusky shadow on the balcony and court-yard. As she smelt the violets her heart trembled with a strange sensation. That portion of the bouquet which she had given to Havel was laid to rest in a living tomb: all the remnant of it which she wished to give his little daughter seemed to awaken out of its tomb.

It occurred to Karla that in the silence of night she might unobserved crawl to Havel’s lighted window and through it look at his domestic happiness. This idea had never before occurred to her. Perhaps it was a crazy whim, but it possessed her like the fixed idea of a crazy brain. What would result from acting thus? Might she not by one unguarded look destroy the happiness she had enjoyed in her quiet corner?

Karla arose, and like a marten when it steals upon its prey, crawled over the staircase. Her heart beat with a strange unrest. If she carried away a picture of his tranquillity perhaps it would pain her more than if she had never seen it. But the strange influence which had prompted her to leave her hard couch hurried her forward and if at that moment she had been about to commit a crime, she could not have turned aside. Perhaps some objections did occur to her mind but her heart felt a need of what she did even if she had at the next moment to atone for it by death.

She drew near to the window and her first look fell on Havel’s little daughter, who slept in a little bed by the window and had put Karla’s doll to rest beside her. An air of calm repose breathed throughout the chamber. A little bird in a a cage suspended by the window dreamt of its image reflected in the opposite mirror. Havel slept by the other window: by his bed on a small table a candle still burnt and beside it lay a half-opened book which he had been reading. She recognized the book. It was one from which Havel used to read aloud to her and she used to listen listlessly enough. If she had had a single leaf out of that book now, it would have been sacred to her, it would have been her most highly prized possession. A soft carpet covered Rh