Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/89

 day the western sky had been glowing like a sea of fire; her eyes had seen the heavens open, and her heart had been full of the presentiment of a great happiness. But none of these dreams of bliss and love had come true; all the hopes of her young life had been blighted. How should her heart not break with the pity of it all?

‘I shall get over it, indeed I shall,’ she told herself, but a voice deep down told her she never would, and that she never could detach her heart from the man to whom it had been so wholly given.

‘I shan’t tear my hair about it! Perhaps he is now laughing at me with one of my rivals. I won’t think of him—I won’t, he isn’t worth it! If I stay where I am, no one will tell me of his new courtship and his marriage; no one will praise his bride to me—her beauty, his fondness for her. Fond? Could he really be fond of her? I can hardly believe it. I blame him severely, but to love another in his place—no, even spite could not make me do it! But men have quite different ideas of love from ours; unfortunately I have had to learn that. He was not like this before his marriage, though! His wife has spoilt his character.’