had been so hard to her, and was growing so much
harder, that it would be a good thing to get away from it. If she could
become ill and die, with a good kind nun standing by her bedside, and
with the cross pressed to her bosom, and with her eyes fixed on the
sweet face of the Virgin Mother as it was painted in the little picture
in her room--in that way she thought that death might even be grateful.
But to be carried away she knew not whither in the cold, silent,
black-flowing Moldau! And yet she half believed the prophecy of Lotta.
Such a quiet death as that she had pictured to herself could not be
given to her! What nun would come to her bedside--to the bed of a girl
who had declared to all Prague that she intended to marry a Jew? For
weeks past she had feared even to look at the picture of the Virgin.

"I'm afraid you'll think I am very late, father," she said, as soon as
she reached home.

Her father muttered something, but not angrily, and she soon busied
herself about him, doing some little thing for his comfort, as was
her wont. But as she did so she could not but remember that she had
undertaken to be a spy upon him, to secrete his key, and to search
surreptitiously for that which he was supposed to be keeping
fraudulently. As she sat by him empty-handed--for it was Sunday night,
and as a Christian she never worked with a needle upon the Sunday--she
told herself that she could not do it. Could there be any harm done
were she to ask him now, openly, what papers he kept in that desk? But
she desired to obey her lover where obedience was possible, and he had
expressly forbidden her to ask any such question. She sat, therefore,
and said no word that could tend to ease her suffering; and then, when
the time came, she went suffering to her bed.

On the next day there seemed to come to her no opportunity for doing
that which she had to do. Souchey was in and out of the house all the
morning, explaining to her that they had almost come to the end of the
flour and of the potatoes which he had bought, that he himself had
swallowed on the previous evening the last tip of the great sausage--
for, as he had alleged, it was no use a fellow dying of starvation
outright--and that there was hardly enough of chocolate left to make
three cups. Nina had brought out her necklace and had asked Souchey to
take it to the shop and do the best with it he could; but Souchey had
declined the commission, alleging that he would be accused