Smilowicz has come to see me.
He, too, is mentally depressed at times: which I should never have suspected.
He edged himself into the very arm-chair in which Witold had been seated last evening. For some time he was silent; and then: "There are days," he said, "when I think myself an idiot for having wasted my life over a mere shadow. Oh, how I envy you!"
"Why, is your life wasted?" I cried in amazement.
"You have been at our lodgings—and you have seen." …
"Well?"
"You have seen all!"
"But your wife is a happy woman," I said, trying to take the optimistic side of things; though all the time I was saying to myself (and I really don't know why): "How is love possible between those two?"
"My wife may be so," he said, slowly. "Sometimes I cannot."
"They say it is a great thing to have children. Even if you do not attain the goal you aim at, there always remains something of you."
My remark elicited no reply from him. I
