Flowers to embellish the funeral repast! Flowers on the coffin of one gone forever!

But that is nothing. No, nothing, I swear! Often and often the monument over a sepulchre may turn into a gate that leads to a new life.

Smilowicz has come to see me.

He, too, is mentally depressed at times: which I should never have suspected.

He edged himself into the very arm-chair in which Witold had been seated last evening. For some time he was silent; and then: “There are days,” he said, “when I think myself an idiot for having wasted my life over a mere shadow. Oh, how I envy you!”

“Why, is your life wasted?” I cried in amazement.

“You have been at our lodgings—and you have seen.” ...

“Well?”

“You have seen all!”

“But your wife is a happy woman,” I said, trying to take the optimistic side of things; though all the time I was saying to myself (and I really don’t know why): “How is love possible between those two?”