Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/412

 and on it the white iron figure of the Christus, then lesser crosses, then graves without crosses, some green, some flowery, some half sunk in the ground.

And there was in that cemetery something vast and incomprehensible, something that we can never analyze, something vast as a sea, chilling as winter’s ice and snow. But to-day the breath of winter did not issue from its gates, rather a portion of the spring seemed to hover over that dwelling place of the dead.

When he stood by the wicket-gate, he waited and everything for which he waited, could emerge from the grave-digger’s. humble abode in the person of Staza.

Staza tripped forth just as on that day long past, but how different. It was not a child who hopped even over the graves like a small bird, or a butterfly. It was a pensive, blooming maiden, a rose, which blossoms on a single bush, there to glisten and then fade. She walked with her head bowed and seemed as though she would fain water those graves with her tears. And she was infinitely charming.

Frank had opened the wicket-gate a hundred times, and to-day it seemed as though he knew not how he could ever enter by it. When he thought that Staza might observe him, he retreated and only peeped furtively through the bars. And he saw Staza who was the self same Staza whom he had led about the whole neighbourhood, and who yet