A few reeling snowflakes fell slowly and distinctly in the lamplight. Zdenka looked at them and thought of the clear wings of the midges that floated around the shining spheres during the summer. She was still completely lost in thought when Severin spoke to her. But then she laughed cheerfully. And when she looked into his handsome young face, made more attractive by the chill, her mood became light and joyous. They walked through the city together. They looked at the comical wares in the display windows of a toyshop, where a small train ran on real tracks, and admired the stuffed tiger that a carpet dealer had put in his window as an advertisement. They stopped in front of the icy windows of delicatessens, where golden sprats shone in white boxes. Then Severin bought dinner for both of them and she went with him to his bachelor lodgings.

Zdenka worked in an office until six o’clock. Both her parents were dead and she lived alone in a room on Old Town Square. A few times during the period of her unhappy youth when she had been forced to care for herself, she had given herself to strange men, and, crying while Severin kissed her, she apologized that he was not the first to whom she had offered her love. He accepted her trembling tenderness without petty jealousy, and later, when he saw that a passion was growing in her from the playful mood of that evening, it gave him no cause for concern. She was a comfort in the emptiness of his weary heart, which did not become entangled by the luster and devotion of her love. He listened to her when, with a singing contralto, she spoke of her happiness, and was gladdened by the inexperienced words she chose. But basically she left him cold. She had nothing of the consuming flame, the flash of lightning that his soul needed. She was a pretty and fanciful accident that occurred without force or consequence, something of no interest to him.

For Zdenka, however, her meeting with Severin had become a wonderful event. It had seized her with irresistible force when he took her to his apartment after a short time together on the street. And once she was his, she loved him with an awed and boundless devotion. The Slavic blood that expressed itself in hatred and insurrection among the men of her people brought forth a flood of enthusiasm in her, and now all the gates were opened to it. She was frightened that she could do nothing against it, and in her deepest heart she felt it with terror and bliss.

It was the beginning of beautiful days for her. She walked through the city with Severin in the way that he had been accustomed to for years. He taught her the sensitivity to noises and distant cries that was part of his nature. When she closed her eyes and let him lead her, she recognized the streets she was walking on by the smells of the stones and the pavement. He revealed the monotonous beauty of the suburban landscape, the wonder of Wyschehrad with its large stone gates and the memorial of St. Wenceslaus. She learned to love the Moldau when the lights from the riverbanks rocked on the water in the darkness and the smell of tar came from the suspension bridges. She sat with him in the pubs of the Kleinseite, and was enchanted by the exaggerated leisureliness of the old men as they drank their glasses of beer. In the thick cigar smoke the arches of the low roof and the pictures of Napoleon on the wall lost their borders in achromatic grayness. Together they went to the Vikarka on Hradschin, where, a few armlengths from the door, the cathedral rose into the heights with wonderful wall ornaments and stone figures in its niches.