house, madder and more magnificent than ever before. I look on smiling, while the noise grows ever louder. Gaily passing before me comes a dancing chain of women, who laughingly form their lips for kisses and drink my health, as they whisper in my ear that they love me.
The dancing chain has gone dancing by. I am left alone, forgetting. Forgetting all the gaiety, forgetting all the fair faces, forgetting everything except that Marie was not there.
Forgetting that also, as the days go by.
XXXIIIAnd new grass was beginning to grow on the grave.
Then it happened that one morning I crossed the square. It was terrible weather. The storm swept round the statue, where in the evenings the girls take their places in the merry-go-round, the wet snow drifted through the dense dark air. I forced my way through the storm, when suddenly a gleam of spring brightened the way before me, A pink flower in a hat. The hat on a tall, slender girl. Marie! Yes, Marie! We stood in front of each other in the middle of the square, where the weather raged its worst. We stood face to face, wet and burning with rain and wind—stood and laughed.
What did we care about the weather? Was it cold? Was it stormy? Did it still go on snowing? All I knew was that we had the big square all to ourselves, that there in front of me was the sun
