Читать книгу Kobiety (Women). A Novel of Polish Life онлайн

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“But we could not fall in: there is a stone barrier.”

“No matter,” I whisper, half-frantic with dread. “Let us go!”

We make the best of our way back. Janusz is silent, but I feel, as I am holding to his arm, that he too is trembling. He might have quieted me with the words: “Fear nothing by my side!” For but a minute ago, I had boundless confidence in him. Now I know that he can be frightened.

We hear the sounds of the harp and the violin, and a row of lit windows shines on the pitch-black trees.

Janusz breaks the silence. “I have no fear in a forest at night; I fear neither robbers nor wild beasts: but things one cannot explain are not to my liking.”

Yes, I quite understand, and share the same dislike: but somehow I had a fancy that....

We dance merrily till morning; my painful impression has quite faded.

As we return, we change places; Martha goes with her grandfather, and I am with Janusz. Daybreak shows us a lovely landscape: hills covered with dark woods, fields white with stubble. The sky grows rosy, and we catch ever new glimpses of dim heights, of solitary pear-trees scattered in the fields, of tall sombre poplars in rows, marking the highways in the plain.