CANZELEI.
His jaw turned aside. His steady hand snatched at the tablet and tore it from its hooks. He took a mason’s pencil from his waistcoat. He reflected for a second. Was it spelled in Hungarian with a T or a D? Then, with vigorous strokes he wrote on the door[B]:
IRODA.
CHAPTER VIII
When on quiet Sunday afternoons the bell sounded at the door of Ulwing’s house, a sudden silence fell over all in the green room. Nobody mentioned it, yet each of them knew what came to the others’ minds. This hour was Uncle Sebastian’s hour.
Summer passed away. One morning, the bandy-legged little old man emerged again from the dawn and silently pasted on the walls the last pages of the great book.
Mamsell Tini protested in vain—Anne would stop. She read the poster.
“It is all over.”
She went on, saying never a word, and her imagination, restricted by the walls of a town, ignorant of the free, limitless fields, showed her a quaint picture. She saw in her mind a great square, something like the Town Hall Market, but even larger than that. Around it, trees in a row. Grass everywhere, red-capped soldiers lying motionless in the grass. Her feverish eyes closed.
“It is all over....”