“I hope you don’t mean that we two do not get on well,” I answer, smiling amiably.
He shows me a post-card that he has got from Roslawski: water, some shipping, and an ugly building ashore, with innumerable windows. I for the first time see his handwriting: sloping, not very legible; nothing much out of the ordinary. I should like to press it to my lips, which would be a piece of highly unjustifiable sentimentalism.
Greatly as I want to go home, and—like a child—have “a good cry” all by myself, I stay on there for some time. Obojanski offers me several books, dealing mostly with matters zoölogical. I of course try to excuse myself as best I can. At last, he lectures me on the way I am wasting my talents, and says that my mind, “if deprived of intellectual nourishment, will pine away.”
“But, Professor,” I point out, not without a touch of pride, “I really am not at all naturally fitted to be a woman of scientific attainments.”
“Ah, but have a little faith in yourself; you ought to. Truly, science is your exclusive vocation; but you must work; you need to work a good deal. With your abilities....”
I go home, taking the books with me. My room is dark and dreary and solitary. I am most bitterly disappointed.
I have done a silly thing to-day.
A girl named Nierwiska works in the office with me. I like her best of all, because she is the prettiest. Both her looks and her getup are in rather consistent Japanese style; a style that makes her look limp and drooping under the burden of her own hair. Now, on my return from the holidays, I had noticed that she was much changed and extremely dejected.
To-day, contrary to my custom, I left the office with her, and it turned out that our way home was the same for a good distance.
Our conversation runs at first on indifferent matters. Nierwiska answers briefly, in low tones, now and then casting a somewhat suspicious glance towards me. Women have intuition; and she, less cultured than Martha, is averse to purely objective curiosity. I feel that, at any question too bluntly put, she will shut her lips fast, shrink back into herself, and close up like a mimosa leaf; and this makes me doubly cautious. Our talk turns upon the general lot of women who earn their bread.