l her boarders into one room on Ona's account, but now he
could go up in the garret where he belonged--and not there much longer,
either, if he did not pay her some rent.

Jurgis went without a word, and, stepping over half a dozen sleeping
boarders in the next room, ascended the ladder. It was dark up above;
they could not afford any light; also it was nearly as cold as outdoors.
In a corner, as far away from the corpse as possible, sat Marija,
holding little Antanas in her one good arm and trying to soothe him to
sleep. In another corner crouched poor little Juozapas, wailing because
he had had nothing to eat all day. Marija said not a word to Jurgis; he
crept in like a whipped cur, and went and sat down by the body.

Perhaps he ought to have meditated upon the hunger of the children, and
upon his own baseness; but he thought only of Ona, he gave himself up
again to the luxury of grief. He shed no tears, being ashamed to make a
sound; he sat motionless and shuddering with his anguish. He had never
dreamed how much he loved Ona, until now that she was gone; until now
that he sat here, knowing that on the morrow they would take her away,
and that he would never lay eyes upon her again--never all the days
of his life. His old love, which had been starved to death, beaten to
death, awoke in him again; the floodgates of memory were lifted--he saw
all their life together, saw her as he had seen her in Lithuania, the
first day at the fair, beautiful as the flowers, singing like a bird. He
saw her as he had married her, with all her tenderness, with her heart
of wonder; the very words she had spoken seemed to ring now in his ears,
the tears she had shed to be wet upon his cheek. The long, cruel battle
with misery and hunger had hardened and embittered him, but it had not
changed her--she had been the same hungry soul to the end, stretching
out her arms to him, pleading with him, begging him for love and
tenderness. And she had suffered--so cruelly she had suffered, such
agonies, such infamies--ah, God, the memory of them was not to be borne.
What a monster of wickedness, of heartlessness, he had been! Every angry
word that he had ever spoken came back to him and cut him like a knife;
every selfish act that he had done--with what torments he paid for them
now! And such devotion and awe as welled up in his soul--now that it
could never be spoken, now that it was too late, too late! His bosom-was
choking with it, bursting with i