As It Was Written

VERONIKA PATHZUOL was my betrothed. I must give some account of the circumstances under which she and I first met each other, so that my tale may be clear and complete from the beginning. For a long while, without knowing why, I had been restless-hungry, without knowing for what I hungered. Teaching music to support myself, I employed all of the day that was not thus occupied in practicing on my own behalf. My life consequently was a solitary one, numbering but few acquaintances and not any friends. In my short intervals of leisure I was generally too tired to seek out society; I was too obscure and unimportant to be sought out in turn. Yet, young and of an ardent temperament, doubtless it was natural that I should have been dimly conscious of something wanting; and, not prone to selfanalysis, doubtless it was also natural that I should have had no distinct conception of what the wanting something was. Besides, it would soon be summer. The soft air and bright sunshine of spring awoke a myriad vague desires in my heart. I strove in vain to understand them. They were all the more poignant because they had no definite object. Twenty times a day I would catch myself heaving a mighty sigh; but asking, 'What are you sighing for?' I had to answer, 'Who can tell?' My thoughts got into the habit of wandering away would fly off to cloud-land at the most inopportune moments. While my pupils were blundering through their exercises their master would fall to thinking of other things-afterward impossible to remember what. From morning to night I went about with a feeling of expectancy-an event was impending-presently a change would come over the tenor of my life. I waited anxiously, on the alert for its first premonitory symptom.