When it was late and dark and the children lay asleep, I sat at the window and looked down the street where hundreds of lamps shed their gloomy light, and countless people streamed gaily to and fro. They looked all so different in appearance and manner, and yet so alike because of the instinct of pleasure that governed them. Their eyes flashed, their cheeks glowed. They all hurried towards the theatre that was close by, and their haste and anticipation vibrated in the air like an electric current. I felt it all and shuddered, and then thought that I saw a monster of gigantic size with a malicious smile on its lips, and a malicious light in its eyes, kicking onward and onward the coil of carriage-horses and people, laughing madly all the while. To get rid of that horrid picture I closed my eyes and thought of home. There the children would be lying asleep. Two or three in each bed, so they would lie ... and mother would be sitting at the table in a cotton-dress that was mended and patched.... I could almost smell the oil of the little lamp and see the red flame trembling behind the crooked screen. And then I saw myself among the children, restless and discontented, full of a vague longing for somebody to whom I could confide all the wonderful thoughts and dreams that I constantly conceived, and to which mother would have responded with a little tortured smile, and father with a shake of his head, had they known, ... and suddenly I was once more bound in the spell of those eyes that had looked at me so calmly and firmly to-day. "Because you want me," I heard him say again; and the words that had seemed so hard--almost brutal--a few hours ago, had now such a soft, quiet, reassuring touch that I stretched out my arms as if to cling to them. I had written to him, enclosed my latest poems, and he had asked me in a short note to arrange for a few minutes' quiet talk. I had never yet met him without the children, and the thought of seeing him alone and undisturbed made me tremble with a strange delight. On a very clumsy pretext I asked for an hour off the next day, and arrived punctually. His salute was very polite, his face very grave. "I have only a quarter of an hour to spare," he said, "and must tell you at once what I intended to tell you." His remark that he had no more than fifteen minutes, whilst I had a whole hour at my disposal disappointed me, and I hardly answered his opening remark. He, however, took no notice of my anger and continued: "Many thanks for the letter as well as for the poems, and it is on account of the poems that I wanted to talk to you. You had the kindness to let me read some of your poems before, and I was struck by the talent they revealed to me, but your versification is as bad as your thoughts and feelings are exquisite. There"--he took my letter out of his pocket--"you may see for yourself what I mean."