Page:Nalkowska - Kobiety (Women).djvu/76

64 with me. I like her best of all, because she is the prettiest. Both her looks and her get-up are in rather consistent Japanese style; a style that makes her look limp and drooping under the burden of her own hair. Now, on my return from the holidays, I had noticed that she was much changed and extremely dejected.

To-day, contrary to my custom, I left the office with her, and it turned out that our way home was the same for a good distance.

Our conversation runs at first on indifferent matters. Nierwiska answers briefly, in low tones, now and then casting a somewhat suspicious glance towards me. Women have intuition; and she, less cultured than Martha, is averse to purely objective curiosity. I feel that, at any question too bluntly put, she will shut her lips fast, shrink back into herself, and close up like a mimosa leaf; and this makes me doubly cautious. Our talk turns upon the general lot of women who earn their bread.

"Those who are forced to work for their livelihood," she says in musical tones, "are apt to fall into a chronic state of dreariness, even when no real and tangible cause is there."