Then too Lorand remained with us.
His was no longer a life, merely a counting of days.
It was piteous to know it and to see him.
A strapping figure, whose calling was to be a hero!
A warm heart, that might have been a paradise on earth to some woman!
A refined, fiery temperament that might have been the leading spirit of some country.
Who quietly without love or happiness, faded leaf by leaf and did not await anything from the morrow.
Yet he feared the coming days.
Often he chided me for wanting to brick up the door of that lonely building there beside the brook.
Lest my children should ask, "what can dwell within it?" Lest they try to discover the meaning of that hidden inscription as I had tried in my childish days.