The nearness of the whirling life buoyed her. She hastened on.
“Here, these people are walking about, laughing and talking,” she thought; “each has his little world, and in it his joys, his cares, his sorrows. . . . This their world will disappear with them. No one else will inherit it,—they will all live their . . . what was it he said that time in the park?” That sentence had never before occurred to her,—indeed, she had not heard it that time,—the words only fell accidentally upon her soul, and that soul had found them this day: “‘And that life! It is something temporary, and it does not make much difference how we go through it.’ Thus we all continue to live our temporary lives. . . .”
She walked and walked. . . . The streets dinned and clattered. . . . She crossed Karlín and Poříč.
She was thinking how it would all be in a few minutes: the greenish water would enter her mouth, her ears, her nose . . . the whirl-
