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