Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/119

 threw his hand beside him and overturned the candle which was burning itself out beside him.

Karla held her breath. Should she go away or should she raise the alarm? The candle fell on the book whose leaves began to burn and Karla by its light caught sight of a small wreath of Italian lilac, which she herself had placed in it. The leaves smouldered one after another, the wreath was already half devoured. Karla felt herself rooted to the ground so that she could not advance a step, her breast heaved and yet she could not utter a syllable.

The book was already half consumed, of her wreath nothing remained but a cinder which glowed for a moment and then fell in fragments in which no one could recognize its original form.

Karla only now observed that above the fire hung a curtain which would certainly catch fire as soon as the flames leapt higher and that might happen at any moment.

Karla fell a choking in her throat, a voice broke forth in a terrible shriek. She threw herself like a tigress on the window, wrenched it till the very house shook, with a piercing voice exclaimed: “It burns!”

Havel started out of sleep as though he had roused himself by a violent effort. Sleepy though he was, he yet recognized the danger his house was in, quickly sought for water and in his haste seized the vase in the window by his little daughter’s bed, quickly drenched the curtain and the burning book. He trembled all over and stood as if turned to stone. In the room it was quite dark.

Then he lit another candle to see what the fire had consumed. The book was almost wholly a cinder. Karla’s souvenir was destroyed and Havel held in his hands a bunch of violets. He knew not whence they came nor what had saved his life.

At the entrance to the Volskansky cemetery, just as at this day, stood a group of beggars male and female. They lived by appealing for alms at the dwelling-place of death. People bringing forth their relations for burial in that place where all must pause at last were more easily inclined to offer some small tribute to those living bones, who stand out in testimony against the vaunted progress of our age in which spiritual excellence must perish that the body may survive.

By them sat an aged woman whom they called “garland grandmother”. She only differed from the rest in this that she did not Rh