CHAPTER IX
My sister felt the effect of having retired late on the previous night, she therefore lay down to rest during the day. I was left alone and seated myself on an easy chair by the window, with a novel in my hand, but I could not fix my mind on my book; one's taste is subject to change. Only a year ago I was so fond of books of this kind that I stole time even from my studies for an occasional hour of novel reading. It had seemed to me then that I could spend my life happily with nothing else to do but read stories.
But now my book lay open before me, and I glanced through it mechanically, grasping of course not a word of it. I was, in fact, not reading at all. I was lonely at heart, yearning for something not within my reach, but what that something was I could not myself understand, and that made me the more lonely. I looked towards the
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