iven at an age when they were barely
lisping. He knew every chamber, almost every corner of the houses
in which they had been reared. He had raised many of them in his
strong arms from the floor--he who at that time was the praised,
the beloved, the sought for. He who had amused and entertained
them, was he, indeed, to imagine a day when they would pass him
at a distance and indifferently? How could he? He with rosy
glasses on his eyes, those eyes famed at that period for beauty,
had been given to tenderness and attachments; he had considered
the feelings and relations of men as eternal. But from various
causes a multitude of his relations with people had ended
already--and now they were ending to the last one. He had the
vivid sensation of hanging in a vacuum, and felt a growing need
to grasp after something or someone lest he might tumble into a
place which he knew not, but which he felt must be abyss-like. At
the beginning of his walk he thought that in that bright hour of
the day when throngs of gayly-dressed people were covering the
sidewalks, and the middle of the street was filled with passing
carriages, some person would stop him, would invite him, would
attend him somewhere, or take him to some place. What was he to
do now? Whither was he to go? Baron Emil, whose mediaeval mansion
had been in recent days almost his one refuge from weariness and
lonely tedium, had gone to his estate to make trips in various
directions and search in village cottages and under their roofs
for remnants of art which were genuine or suitable. He was to
return soon; but, meanwhile, Kranitski could not sit in the broad
chair before Tristan, who was giving obeisance on the wall of the
chamber to Isolde, nor sit at the table where, besides
gastronomic tidbits, he found conversation to which he was
accustomed, nor in presence of the Triumph of Death sweeping
through the air on bat wings, or experience the tone of
beyond-the-worldness. With the departure of the baron he lost the
only ground on which he met Maryan--that dear child. The very
thought now of Maryan, from whom after so many years of life in
common he was separated, brought tears to Kranitski's eyelids.

He took a seat on a bench of the garden, and wishing to light a
cigarette drew the golden case from his pocket. He did not light
the cigarette, however; for there, beyond the low paling near
which he was sitting, passed a splendid carriage drawn by two
horses and bearing serv