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

5 страница из 53

“As it happened, I did not fail.”

“So I see.”

“Did you want me to fail?”

“I did.”

“For what reason, pray?”

“I was in a very pleasant mood—a sort of pantheistic mingling with Nature, that requires solitude to be enjoyed.”

“All the same, I am going to stay,” he says with a determined air, and carefully ties his horse’s reins to a pine-branch.

A silence follows. Janusz brushes a few pine-cones out of his way, and then seats himself by my side. I sit up likewise, arrange the wreath of corn-flowers on my head, and lean back against a trunk.

“Do you not see that we are at odds?” he asks at length.

“That may very well be,” I answer with some disdain. “And how did you find out where I was?”

“I followed you.”

“Did you, indeed?”

“My balcony commands an extensive view. Your rose-coloured dress was plainly to be seen, as you went along the meadows and fields. You followed the path that skirts the ditch, did you not? And so on to the wood, where you disappeared. I followed on horseback along the highroad: a far shorter way.”