down and kicked them; his feet become entangled in their thin sucker-like claws, he fell, was seized, torn and suffocated. Then everything disappeared.
Everything disappeared in whirling confusion. And suddenly he heard quite near the veiled voice: “I have brought you the parcel.” He sprang up and opened his eyes, and before him stood the girl from Hybsmonka, squint-eyed and pregnant, her stomach damp, and gave him something wrapped up ina damp rag. “It’s not her!” groaned Prokop painfully, and suddenly he saw before him the tall, dreary saleswoman who used to stretch his gloves for him on wooden sticks. “It’s not her!” Prokop repeated, and there appeared before him a puffy child on legs bent with rickets who . . . who shamelessly offered herself to him! “Go away,” cried Prokop, and then he saw an overturned can in the middle of a dried-up lawn and some cabbages covered all over with the traces of snails, and this picture would not disappear in spite of all his efforts to banish it.
At that moment the bell rang quietly, with a noise like the piping of a bird. Prokop dashed to the door and opened it. In the passage was standing the girl with the veil, pressing the parcel to her breast and panting for breath. “So it’s you,” said Prokop gently and, without knowing why, was profoundly touched. The girl came in, brushing him with her shoulder as she went past. Her scent moved Prokop painfully.
She remained standing in the middle of the room. “Don’t be angry, please,” she said quietly and somehow hastily, “that I have given you such a
