Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/187

 measure his own worth by this constancy rather than according to what his rank and position warranted. He began to carry out his system so consistently that, save at lessons, he hardly exchanged words with Lidunka and was as chary of speech as a miser of pence; and yet Lidunka seemed to be supremely well satisfied with all this. She also never spoke a single superfluous word and on entering and leaving the room scarcely so much as looked at Vojtech.

Vojtech so clung to his determination that he sought to regulate his behaviour at the Horskas’s in Lidunka’s presence on a ready-made system. He frequently thought about the matter a whole hour, and when he lay down to rest at night, often had not disposed of this system of his. Before going to sleep he pictured Lidunka how she would answer his greeting coldly, he after that yet more coldly, how she cast down her eyes, after that he turned away, took his hat, and so—adieu. He had not fully disposed of this system and carried it with him into the kingdom of dreams. It seemed to him as though he managed to exhibit his coldness so well that at last it sickened even Lidunka. Then she turned to him and gave him to understand that she would forgive him if only he would exchange words with her. But after that Vojtech turned away from her altogether, until Lidunka broke forth into audible weeping. When Vojtech awoke after this his face was moist and he perceived that he himself had been weeping.

What could it all mean?

When Vojtech examined himself as to this dream he began to tremble as in a fever and confessed that his reason was at the end of its tether.

When he went to the Horskas’s on the following day the children in the streets cried after him in vain, “Throw us a kreuzer!” He did not hear them and did not throw anything. All the time he was engrossed with the dream. When he came to the Horskas’s he scarcely dared look at Lidunka. He almost felt ashamed in her presence and dreaded lest they should read last night’s dream on his face and worst of all that he had awoke from that dream in tears. All his life he had never given way to tears. Strange that a dream can so constrain our nature as to make us blush for ourselves.

Yet other things surprised and startled Vojtech. It seemed to him as though Lidunka was becoming less attentive at her lessons than she used to be.