The woman behind the plow was a superb figure—the embodiment of nature herself.
I went on.
Toward evening I returned over the same road. The woman was still plowing, but now she had a little girl holding the whip. The sirocco had blown a heavy mist in from the Adriatic. Where the woman was plowing the vapors floated in layers of uneven density—the veils of evening. The plowers passed into them and out again, loomed now and then dwindled in the mist as the moods of light pleased.
It struck me that it would be worth while to have a few words with this woman. She was so close to the war and yet, seemingly, so far from it that almost anything she could say promised to have an unusual color.
"These people here are Slovenes, sir!" remarked my soldier-chauffeur when I had sought his advice. "They do not speak German, as a rule. But we can try."
It was love's labor lost. The woman spoke some Slovene words in greeting and I replied in Bulgarian, of which language I know a few words. The chauffeur was no better off.
I dug into a furrow with the tip of my shoe and said:
"Dobro!"
She nodded recognition of both my "remark" and appreciation of her work.
To show the woman that I knew what I was talking about, I took the plow out of her hands and drew a furrow myself. It was her turn to say: