Then, for the second time after many years, he heard the voices of his mother and his grandmother. They spoke of misfortunes falling upon one and another of their family, beginning with the old man of the country house and the terrace. Oh! oh! It was absurd. He sprang to his feet. It was absurd. Humiliations! Disgrace! Family misfortunes! Absurd! Well, Constance had refused him. Perhaps she would come round. Meanwhile his eyes fell upon the table and his papers. He sat down: he took up the pen. Love, who had been looking on sorrowfully from a lofty perch on a bookshelf, vanished with a sigh of despair. The lover heard neither the sigh nor the fluttering of Love’s wings. He bent over his papers. A moment, and he was again absorbed--entirely absorbed in the work before him. * * * * * In her own room the girl sat before her table and took up her pen. But she threw it down again. “No,” she said, “I could not. He is altogether absorbed in himself. He knows nothing and understands nothing--and the world is so full of miseries; and he is all happiness, and men and women suffer--how they suffer!--for their sins and for other people’s sins. And he knows nothing. He understands nothing. Oh, if he could be made human by something--by humiliation, by defeat! If he could be made human, like the rest, why, then--then----” She threw away her pen, pushed back the chair, put on her hat and jacket, and went out into the streets among the men and women. CHAPTER III SOMETHING TO COME