And this caused my heart to beat with emotions the pulsing wings of which at once gladdened me, and cooled my fervour... And how greatly, at that moment, did I feel the need of someone able to respond to my questions without passion, yet with truth, and in the language of simplicity! For beside me there lay but a man dead and a man drunken, while without the threshold there was stationed one who had far outlived her span of years. No matter, however. If not today, then tomorrow, should I find a fellow-creature with whom my soul might commune.
Mentally I left the hut, and passed on to the steppe, that I might contemplate thence the little dwelling in which alone, though lost amid the earth's immensity, the windows were not blind and black as in its fellow huts, but showed, burning over the head of a dead human being, the fire which humanity had conquered for humanity's benefit.