over us for warmth; and smoke—­tobacco was the last thing we ever went without.  Over the bed was a Virgin and Child—­Misek was a very devout Catholic; but one day when he had had no dinner and a dealer had kept his picture without paying him, he took the image and threw it on the floor before our eyes; it broke, and he trampled on the bits.  Lendorf was another, a heavy fellow who was always puffing out his white cheeks and smiting himself, and saying:  ‘Cursed society!’ And Schonborn, an aristocrat who had quarrelled with his family.  He was the poorest of us all; but only he and I would ever have dared to do anything—­they all knew that!”

Christian listened with awe.  “Do you mean?” she said, “do you mean, that you—?”

“You see! you’re afraid of me at once.  It’s impossible even for you to understand.  It only makes you afraid.  A hungry man living on charity, sick with rage and shame, is a wolf even to you!”

Christian looked straight into his eyes.

“That’s not true.  If I can’t understand, I can feel.  Would you be the same now if it were to come again?”

“Yes, it drives me mad even now to think of people fatted with prosperity, sneering and holding up their hands at poor devils who have suffered ten times more than the most those soft animals could bear.  I’m older; I’ve lived—­I know things can’t be put right by violence—­nothing will put things right, but that doesn’t stop my feeling.”

“Did you do anything?  You must tell me all now.”

“We talked—­we were always talking.”

“No, tell me everything!”

Unconsciously she claimed, and he seemed unconsciously to admit her right to this knowledge.

“There’s not much to tell.  One day we began talking in low voices —­Garin began it; he had been in some affair in Russia.  We took an oath; after that we never raised our voices.  We had a plan.  It was all new to me, and I hated the whole thing—­but I was always hungry, or sick from taking charity, and I would have done anything.  They knew that; they used to look at me and Schonborn; we knew that no one else had any courage.  He and I were great friends, but we never talked of that; we tried to keep our minds away from the thought of it.  If we had a good day and were not so hungry, it seemed unnatural; but when the day had not been good—­then it seemed natural enough.  I wasn’t afraid, but I used to wake up in the night; I hated the oath we had taken, I hated every one of those fellows; the thing was not what I was made for, it wasn’t my work, it wasn’t my nature, it was forced on me—­I hated it, but sometimes I was like a madman.”

“Yes, yes,” she murmured.

“All this time I was working at the Academie, and learning all I could....  One evening that we met, Paunitz was not there.  Misek was telling us how the thing had been arranged.  Schonborn and I looked at each other—­it was warm—­perhaps we were not hungry—­it was springtime, too, and in the Spring it’s different.  There is something.”