The drawing-room door is not tightly closed; Lensky looks through the crack.
Happiness? Where is the happiness? They sit near each other, hand in hand; he embarrassed; she humiliated, shy.
"That cannot remain thus; it is not possible that it should remain thus," Lensky's warm, wild heart cries out. "Take her in your arms," he would like to call to the young man; "bury her shame in your tenderness, raise her broken self-respect by your love!"
It must still happen thus, he must clasp her to his breast, kiss and console her.
Lensky waits, waits breathlessly, fairly spying for a change of affairs; but nothing changes. And suppressing a deep sigh, he turns away.
"That is a rehabilitation, but no happiness!"
XXXII.
A November day--a November day in Venice, and what weather! The plaster wet, the wall smoking with dampness, the water in the canals cloudy, the atmosphere gray and cold, filled with gray mist, and nowhere a sunbeam.
In a large, desolate room, with picturesque bow-windows, sets Mascha at a writing-table. She is reckoning, evidently racking her brains over the great problem how to make ten francs pay for a hundred francs' worth. Sometimes she pauses thoughtfully. Then she pushes the account-book from her, and begins to write a letter. The letter will not come to an end.
She lays aside the pen, and with a quick, angry gesture crumples the sheet. "No, I cannot--I cannot inflict that upon you, father!" she murmurs to herself. She leans her head on her hand; the pen lies unused beside-her.