mised that she would let me know how things turned out, and I went away.
When I got home, I sat down by my empty box and laughed bitterly at myself. But this ebbing of emotion was certainly followed by a corresponding flood—again I saw her in her unhappiness, making her confession; the surge of emotion ceased, and I waited in suspense for her letter. . .
| · | · | · | · | · | · |
Day upon day passed by, week upon week,—no letter came. For some time I endured that with the tranquil pride of an offended man, but at last I went to enquire. Vlasta had left Prague the very next day in the afternoon,—more than that they did not know. . .
I was embittered both against her and against myself. I had become quite accustomed to the array of a fiction-hero; now my array was torn; the novel in which I figured appeared to me a piece of utter folly, which robbed me of my beloved books; its heroine was God knows who, her array had also lost its glory, and the worst torment was caused me by the reflection that she would think of me with something of the derision with which a designing female of that kind would generally remember an unsophisticated fool who had crossed her path. Supposing, that is, she remembers me at all, I reflected. . .
Man is never satisfied with the novels in which
