was rather an ill-tempered man, but he liked Bernardine.
"I have put these violets aside for you, Fraeulein," he said, in his
sulky way. "I meant to have sent them to your room, but have been
interrupted in my work."
"You spoil me with your gifts," she said.
"You spoil my cat with the milk," he replied, looking up from his work.
"That is a beautiful wreath you are making, Herr Schmidt," she said.
"Who has died? Any one in the Kurhaus?"
"No, Fraeulein. But I ought to keep my door locked when I make these
wreaths. People get frightened, and think they, too, are going to die.
Shall you be frightened, I wonder?"
"No, I believe not," she answered as she took possession of her violets,
and stroked the saffron cat. "But I am glad no one has died here."
"It is for a young, beautiful lady," he said. "She was in the Kurhaus
two years ago. I liked her. So I am taking extra pains. She did not care
for the flowers to be wired. So I am trying my best without the wire.
But it is difficult."
She left him to his work, and went away, thinking. All the time she had
now been in Petershof had not sufficed to make her indifferent to the
sadness of her surroundings. In vain the Disagreeable Man's preachings,
in vain her own reasonings with herself.
These people here who suffered, and faded, and passed away, who were
they to her?
Why should the faintest shadow steal across her soul on account of them?
There was no reason. And still she felt for them all, she who in the old
days would have thought it waste of time to spare a moment's reflection
on anything so unimportant as the sufferings of an _individual_ human
being.
And the bridge between her former and her present self was her own
illness.
What dull-minded sheep we must all be, how lacking in the very elements
of imagination, since we are only able to learn by personal experience
of grief and suffering, something about the suffering and grief of
others!
Yea, how the dogs must wonder at us: those dogs who know when we are in
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