OH, save me or I die of laughter. Antek and his wife have come home from Paris. She poses as the wife of an artist of golden Bohemia; he wears silk shirts, has a forelock, and wears his beard wedge-form. I understand all; I understand that she could overcome his habits, his character; but how did she conquer his hair?—that remains for me an endless puzzle.
Antek has not stopped painting “corpses;” but he paints also genre pictures of village life. He has great success. He paints portraits too; these, however, with less result, for the carnation always recalls the “corpse.”
I asked him, through old friendship, if he is happy with his wife. He told me that he had never dreamed of such happiness. I confess that Kazia has disappointed me in a favorable sense.
I too should be perfectly happy, were it not that Eva begins to be a little weak, and, besides, the poor thing becomes peevish. I heard her crying once in the night. I know what that means. She is pining for the theatre. She says nothing, but she pines.
I have begun a portrait of Pani Ostrynski. She is simply an incomparable woman! Regard for Ostrynski would not restrain me, of course, and were it not that to this hour I love Eva immensely, I know not—
But I love Eva immensely, immensely!
THE END.