eping. "Don't weep, Lorand. Did I annoy you? Don't be angry."

Long did he weep, all the time holding me in his arms. Then suddenly he
heaved a deep and terrifying sigh, and in a low voice stammered in my
ear:

"Father--is--dead."

I was one of those children who could not weep; who learn that only with
manhood. At such a time when I should have wept, I only felt as if some
worm were gnawing into my heart, as if some languor had seized me, which
deprived me of all feeling expressed by the five senses--my brother wept
for me. Finally, he kissed me and begged me to recover myself. But I was
not beside myself. I saw and heard everything. I was like a log of wood,
incapable of any movement.

It was unfortunate that I was not gifted with the power of showing how I
suffered.

But my mind could not fathom the depths of that thought. Our father was
dead!

Yesterday evening he was still talking with us; embracing and kissing
us; he had promised to take us to the country, and to-day he was not: he
was dead. Quite incomprehensible! In my childhood I had often racked my
brains with the question, "What is there beyond the world?" Void. Well,
and what surrounds that void? Many times this distracting thought drove
me almost to madness. Now this same maddening dilemma seized upon me.
How could it be that my father was dead?

"Let us go to mother!" was my next thought.

"We shall go soon after her. She has already departed."

"Whither?"

"To the country."

"But, why?"

"Because she is ill."

"Then why did she laugh so in the night?"

"Because she is ill."

This was still more incomprehensible to my poor intellect.

A thought then occurred to me. My face became suddenly brighter.

"Lorand, of course you are joking; you are fooling me. You merely wished
to alarm me. We are all going away to the country to enjoy ourselves!
and you only wished to take the drowsiness from my eyes when you told me
father was dead."

At these words Lorand clasped his hands, and, with motionless, agonized
face, groaned out:

"Desi, don't torture me; don't torture me with your smiling face."

This caused me to be still more alarmed. I began to tremble, seized one
of his arms, and implored him not to be angry. Of course, I believed
what he said.

He could see that I believed, for all my limbs were trembling.

"Let us go to him, Lorand."

My brother merely gazed at me as if he were horrified at what I had
said.

"To father?"

"Y