Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/194

 The mother stroked her head. Lidunka then buried her face in her mother’s palm and in this way concealed her eyes. From time to time she glanced up from this palm and looked into her mother’s eyes. This she did almost comically, and her mother laughed.

“Do go to sleep, Lidunka”, said her mother. “I mean to stay with you all night”, said Lidunka, almost laughing, but it was plain that those were not the very words which she wanted to say.

Her mother again stroked her head.

“Do you love me, little mother?” asked Lidunka in such an insinuating tone of voice, that her mother burst out laughing.

And again concealing her forehead in the palm of her mother’s hand Lidunka awaited a reply.

But it was not in the least what she wanted to say. Lidunka rose to her feet, bent over her mother, took her mother’s head between her own hands and kissing it only kept saying continually, “No, I will not leave you.”

Her lips were hot.

She sat on the counterpane and after a minute or two began again, “You shall not sleep, I will not let you.”

Nor was that what she wanted to say to her mother. She laid herself all hot and fevered beside her mother and made her mother’s head her pillow. Her mother felt warm tears trickling over her hands.

Lidunka pressed herself against her mother, nestled close to her, and kissing her face said, “No, I will not leave you.” But that was not at all what she wanted to say. The mother drew Lidunka to herself and stroking her laid her to rest beside herself. Lidunka said not a word more.

Had the mother guessed what Lidunka wanted to say?

Vojtech felt like a general who has been defeated. At the Horskas’s he had lost a battle and he understood his loss only too clearly. It seemed to him as though he had lost everything and among the wreckage he saw only his own passion. He laughed at himself, at other times he was terrified at himself. Passion can sometimes be beautiful. Picture rocky ravines, overgrown with hardy shrubs, above them the flickering waterfall, soft moss and stately fir-trees and you rest contented with the scene. Deprive