It is Sunday. In the midst of the little English Catholic chapel in
Paris kneels Nita, her face in her hands. When mass is over, without
waiting to greet any acquaintances, she returns home. She looks pale,
has evidently slept badly. The shadow in her eyes is darker than ever.
Sadly her eyes wander over the park. "Spring is dead," says she. And
suddenly--she had thought it long past, but the conversation with Sonia
revived the painful remembrance anew--she thinks of that time, six full
years ago, when, in a sweet, dreamy May night, quite like yesterday, a
sultry hurricane had killed the spring of her young, pure, sensitive
life with all its poetic enthusiasm and Heaven-aspiring, jubilant
exuberance.
And with this recollection, the old, never fully vanquished horror
of life has again awakened in her, that terrible, all-consuming,
all-degrading horror which must forever exclude her from every sweet,
unconscious, surrendering inclination of the heart.
Wearily she mounts the broad stairs to her apartment. Sonia is not at
home. Nita seats herself at her writing-table, as she does every
Sunday, unwillingly, but punctually, to make up her weekly accounts.