Martin Birck's Youth by Hjalmar Soderberg

But when the lamp was lighted and they sat around the table, each with his own work or book or paper, Martin went off and sat in a corner. For he had suddenly become sad without knowing why. There he sat in the dark, staring in at the circle of yellow light in which the others sat and talked, while he felt himself outside, abandoned and forgotten.

It did not help that Maria hunted out an old volume of Near and Far to show him Garibaldi and the war in Poland and Emperor Napoleon III with his pointed mustaches; he had seen them all many times. Nor did it help that she gave him a piece of paper and taught him to fold it into the shape of a saltcellar, a crow, or a catamaran; for, though he did not know it, Martin only longed for someone to say or do something that would make him cry. It was therefore he sat moody and silent, listening to the rain that whipped against the window, for it had begun to rain again, and the wind shook the glass.