Page:Ossendowski - From President to Prison.djvu/178

166 Under this influence the women sobered down and one of them, after a moment's reflection, replied:

"There was one more woman with us, Katerina Gusieff. She took the bag and went home to hide it."

The policeman, the soldier and the crowd all went along to search the house, which was in another corner of the enclosure, but neither Katerina Gusieff nor the "flying bag" was found there or ever seen again.

Soon the town forgot about this bag, save the two whose lives it changed—a woman in black, who visited the grave of the murdered cashier, and the stupid soldier who spent a year in prison for his careless performance of duty. But it is always this way in the world: the tears of despair of a single individual or of many do not make a continuing discord or a lasting disturbance in the social life, which after a moment moves on and continues its way indifferent to, and regardless of, the sufferings or emotions of the few. This is the law of human nature, dominated by the struggle for existence. Mankind is under the spell of this struggle, the form of which is changed by the influences of civilization and by the spirit; but man seems not to be able nor to be willing to understand this and, through this understanding, to enter upon a higher plane of social life. Yet this will one day come, will surely come, and its approach is already discernible.