She could not understand how men could forget so quickly. It was quite inexplicable! But she mourned for herself as if she were mourning a friend who had died; and wasn’t it true, that the singer, the famous singer, was dead?
One evening she was strolling through a deserted street. At one end of the street was a rubbish shoot. Without knowing why, she stood still, and then she had an object lesson on the futility of all earthly things. For on the rubbish heap lay a post-card, and on the post-card was her picture in the part of Carmen.
She walked away quickly, suppressing her tears. She came to a little side street, and stopped before a stationer’s shop. It had been her custom to look at the shop windows to see whether her portrait was exhibited. But it was not exhibited here; instead of that her eyes fell on a text and she read it, unconsciously:
“The face of the Lord is against them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.”
Them that do evil! That was the reason why her memory was blotted out. That was the explanation of the forgetfulness of men.
“But is it not possible to undo the wrong I have done?” she moaned. “Have I not been sufficiently punished?”
And she wandered in the direction of the wood, where she was not likely to meet anybody. And as she was walking along, crushed, humiliated, her heart full of despair, she met another lonely being, who stopped her as she was going to pass him. His eyes begged permission to speak to her.
It was the conductor. But his eyes did not reproach her, nor did they pity her, they only expressed admiration, admiration and tenderness.
“How beautiful and slender you have grown, Hannah,” he said.
She looked at herself, and she could not help admitting that he was right. Grief had burnt all her superfluous fat and she was more beautiful than she had ever been.