Page:Nalkowska - Kobiety (Women).djvu/83

Rh between me and a shoemaker in his Sunday suit."

Once again, the insincerity, the cheap semiconscious coquetry of these words, is disagreeable to me. No one looking at him could help seeing that a shoemaker, were he clad in those very garments, would be otherwise attired than he. And this Obojanski is perfectly well aware of.

"That," I make answer, "is just what is wrong with men's clothing; it excludes the manifestation of what in reality exists, and, by removing the outward show of an evil, it helps us to forget its presence. I do not think that to be at all right."

"Yes," Smilowicz chimes in with his funny smile, "its result for you, Professor, would be that people, taking you for a shoemaker, might fancy you to be an honest man who gets his bread by his work alone."

The notes of Grieg's Der Frühling just now recur to my mind : they so strongly recall those evenings I spent with Martha. I w^as happier then: every present good is always greatly magnified, when past. I now look back on Klosow as on a Paradise—to which I shall never return!