Mavra returned to her embroidery frame, no longer under the orders of the good Dacka, but under the capricious, fitful superintendence of a housekeeper charged in the interval with the workroom department. Life was not so easy, but what mattered it to Mavra that there should be more harshness or less kindness? She did not live in the present. Her waking hours were passed in an innocent ecstasy that wore her away without suffering. She did not know that this was love. Had she known it, no amount of prayers or tears would have been enough to expiate her unpardonable sin. She loved just as flowers blossom; her ideal was exalted, her dream pure, and she lived upon them. One less chaste would have died. As for the young count, he had no idea of all this.
The countess came back in the spring, and the house resumed its grand, hospitable ways. Mavra was profoundly touched to find that her mistress, far from having forgotten, inquired kindly after her. She returned to her personal attendance upon the countess with more devoted fervor than ever. Later on, the young master was to come back. Dacka conveyed in a mysterious manner that he had something better to do than to bury himself in the country. In the evening she confided to the laundress, in interminable whispers, secrets that were no doubt interesting, but which Mavra made no attempt to overhear, being by nature and taste discreet and reserved.
On the eve of St. John, when young girls plait crowns of flowers, which they throw into the river to see if they are to be married within the year, Mavra went, like the others, to consult fate after this graceful fashion. She never dreamed of marriage; it was a closed world to her, into which she had no desire to penetrate; but she would plait a crown and watch it through the eddies of the capricious stream. The girls had thrown in their garlands. Mavra's got entangled in flowers that a young lad of twenty had just flung in. He was a carpenter. The two crowns whirled round in company, and vanished together from view at the bend of the river.
"We are engaged, Mavra," said he. "Let it be once for all."
"No," she replied calmly, without blushing.
"Why? Do you dislike me?" he asked.
"No, not more than other people. I don't wish to marry."
This was enough to make the carpenter persist in his wish. He tried every means—went the length of begging the countess to intercede for him. Mavra, sent for by her mistress, gave the same explanation.
"Well, if the child does not wish to marry, leave her alone," said the lady philosophically, who would have scrupled to force a fly to drink a drop of milk.
And Mavra, by her own desire, was devoted to celibacy.