He would have given much to avoid this moment. Helena covered her face with her hands and dropped into the armchair. Silence continued for a while, and the rustling of leaves was heard outside the window; inside the soul of a man was writhing in a conflict with itself. To bring Yosef, to take Helena from him, was for Gustav to unbridle misfortune.
The struggle was brief; he knelt before Helena, and putting his lips to her hand, said in a broken voice,—
"I shall do what I can. He will come here. What am I to any one? He will come, but I cannot tell when—I will bring him myself."
Soon after, in leaving the widow's lodgings, he muttered through his set teeth,—
"Yes, he will come; but it is not I who will bring him—he will come in a month—in two months—perhaps I shall be at rest."
An attack of coughing interrupted further meditation. Gustav wandered through the streets for a long time; when he returned home, it struck two in the church belfry.
Yosef was sleeping; he was breathing uniformly, quietly; the light of the lamp fell on his high forehead and open breast. Gustav looked feverishly at that breast. His eyes gleamed with hatred. He sat thus about an hour. All at once he trembled, he came to himself. A sensation was roused in him entirely opposite to any which he had felt up to that moment, a sensation of hunger; he went to the book-shelves, and taking a piece of brown bread, fell to eating it hastily.
CHAPTER IV
Autumn was approaching. It was cold in the rooms of the poorer students. Wrapped in their blankets and wearing caps, they warmed themselves with study. The rooms of those who had something with which to heat their stoves were swarming with comrades. No one visited the club any longer. At first there were efforts to select some other place for a club, but it ended in nothing, because Gustav on the one hand, and on the other Yosef, who had acquired considerable influence among students, resisted together; more especially Yosef, who held that clubs consumed too much time and were of small utility. He desired to introduce reform in this regard, and at last he succeeded. In spite of all opposing opinions he combated for that idea in the University, and especially at Vasilkevich's rooms, where students met with more willingness than elsewhere.
Vasilkevich roomed with Karvovski, or rather the latter with Vasilkevich, for though Karvovski was very wealthy (he was that pale youth who had played on the piano to his comrades in the club) and paid by far the greater part of the rent for their lodgings, the soul and the pivot of this male housekeeping was our Lithuanian.