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h the whole house used to suffer, herself the most. And he subjected himself to an examination as though blaming himself for it. He passed his whole life in review: had he committed any crime that no son had been given to him, no daughter? Ah, if only Kate had a child everything would be right. Then she would have quite enough to do, would be entirely taken up with the little creature round which the love of parents, full of hope and entitled to hope, revolves in an ever-renewed circle. Both husband and wife were torturing themselves, for the woman's thoughts especially always ended at that one point. Now that she had been separated from those dear children, from the, alas, much too short happiness she had experienced that summer, it seemed to have become quite clear to her what she missed--for had it not only weighed on her like a painful suspicion before? But now, now the terrible unvarnished truth was there: everything people otherwise call "happiness" in this world is nothing compared to a child's kiss, to its smile, to its nestling in its mother's lap. She had always given the children in the meadow a tender kiss when they came and went, now she longed for those kisses. Her husband's kiss did not replace them; she would soon have been married fifteen years, _his_ kiss was no longer a sensation, it had become a habit. But a kiss from a child's lips, that are so fresh, so untouched, so timid and yet so confiding, was something quite new to her, something, exceedingly sweet. A feeling of happiness had flowed through her soul on those occasions as well as the quite physical pleasure of being able to bury her mouth in those delicately soft and yet so firm cheeks, which health and youth had covered with a soft down like that on the cheeks of a peach. Her thoughts always wandered back to that meadow in the Alps, full of longing. And this longing of hers that was never stilled magnified what had happened, and surrounded the figures that had appeared in her life for so short a time with the whole halo of tender memories. Her idle thoughts spun long threads. As she longed for those little ones so they would also be longing for her, they would wander across the meadow weeping, and the large present of money she had left behind for each of them with the proprietor of the hotel--she had been obliged to leave without saying good-bye to them--would not console them; they would stand outside the door and cast their eyes up
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