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

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I was sorry for the hares he had killed and lectured him with great unction on man’s cruelty in taking the lives of such defenceless innocent creatures.

Just now I was thinking how I should like to lock Janusz up in a nice cage, and have him all to myself. I should give him plenty of food, but neither let him read (that prohibition he would not find very hard) nor talk to any one; so that he, with all his treasures of vitality, might be mine alone. And occasionally I should enter the cage.

I should then be far more spiritually disposed than I am now. At present, my splendid, primitive, untamed beast is hungry and howling, and mars the divine symphony I listen to in my dreams of light.

I should appease it, and go out to walk in my sacred grove, along the margin of the dark abysmal lake which is in my soul.

And I should willingly have Roslawski to walk with me there!

Janusz has asked me if I would consent to become his wife.

“If only for a month or two, I would with pleasure,” was my truthful reply, which I afterwards turned into a jest: not a nice one, I must say.