Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/395

 all at once he started as though something had stung him in the heart.

And now Staza and Frank avoided one another, or more properly they sought one another but when they ought to have found one another they did not find one another, and when they found one another, they were melancholy and sought one another once more. They, who had grown side by side, like two flower stems, only now became conscious that they were side by side, and began to separate from one another, in order that they might yearn for one another’s presence.

When at even Staza worked in the living room, certainly Frank was not there, and wandered somewhere under the window or outside the burial ground, in the fields, perhaps, even in the woods, God knows where. And if Frank was in the living room, Staza would rather have laid her down beside the charnel house than have been at the same time in the same room with him; and again she glanced into his eyes which were so clear and fervent.

And yet again, sometimes, when by accident they met one another, it seemed to them as though there could not be in the world a greater happiness than such meetings, so that they measured time by them, although they dwelt under the same roof.

When Bartos, the gravedigger, observed what I here relate, he said to Frank, “You will not sleep another night at our house, Frank, you will go to the