Page:Nalkowska - Kobiety (Women).djvu/194

182 Wiazewski, and a wish that he could find it in his heart to love me.

Spring is coming. With a hot sun overhead, there is a cool breeze around. I feel joyful, and frolicsome, and full of animal spirits. I could fall upon the neck of the first man I met in the street! To be loved by somebody, that is my craving. I might feel less fearfully alone and cut off from everything in the world,—I would give many a year of my life. Lord! if anyone would kiss me &hellip; now!—Only, not one of those &hellip; Oh, not one of them!

So many years have passed away since that parting, never to fade out of my mind! Yes: he was the only man I could ever have loved. &hellip; How quickly it all passed away, and how completely it all came to an end! Strange.—A bit of life.

And now it sleeps, that happiness,—sleeps beneath the flowery palls of many a springtime, past and gone.

Such a spring; oh, well-a-day! And in my heart and life all is so blank and so dismal!

I have lived but a short, a very short time; and notwithstanding, how many and how fair