.."
At home four walls ... Coldness ... The miner, Bitska, making jokes
all day in the rain ... the fuse to be lighted in the quarry, the
slow igniting to be watched. Thirty years had been lived ... five-
tenths of his life ... a half ... ten-twentieths. It was like a blank
cartridge ... no kindness ... a life without feeling ... all blank ...
The lamp seemed to go out and something warm lay over his eyes. The
palm of a hand. Nina's words were calm at first; then they grew
frantic.
"Leave her, leave her, darling! Come to me, to me who wants you! What
if she doesn't love you? I do, I love you ..."
He was silent.
"You say nothing? I will give you all; you shall have everything!
Come to me, to me who will give to you so gladly! She is as dead; she
needs nothing! Do you hear? You have me ... I will take all the
suffering on myself ..."
* * * * * * *
The lamp streamed forth clearly again. A little grey clod of humanity
fell on to the maiden's narrow bed.
It was so intensely dark that the blackness seemed to close in on one
like a great wall, and it was difficult to see two paces ahead. Close
to the barracks some men were bawling to the music of a mouth-organ.
Under cover of the gloom someone whistled between his fingers,
babbling insolence and nonsense. The torches glowed through the
tangled network of branches and leaves like globes of fire.
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