Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/394

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On Condition: or Pensioned Off.

Staza quivered at these words, glanced up at him and then looked on the ground: glanced up at him with a gleam in her eyes which he had never seen there before, with fervour so that her bosom was expanded and was penetrated by it. And when she glanced down to the ground, she did not raise her eyes any more, but from the heaving of her own bosom it was evident that this gleam of light and fervour had elevated her whole existence.

Frank was melancholy; what he had said did not satisfy him, and he could not think of anything else. Even Staza was melancholy, because she could not find anything to say at all: but after a brief pause she threw herself at full length on the grass, a deep sigh escaped from her bosom, and then she quickly rose to her feet and without casting one glance at Frank, ran lightly away.

Perhaps she at last told her mother what she wanted to say.

Frank scarcely ventured to glance at her as she ran away, and still less ventured to ask himself the question why she ran away. And he sat down exactly on the place where she had been seated a moment before, only that he looked toward the wicket-gate and then called to mind how he had come to the cemetery the first time with the measure for his grandfather’s grave. And then he called to mind how he had slept in his grandfather’s grave, and how he and Staza had nestled together. And