“Thou, my best little kitten, thou.”
She, holding to her mother’s dress, raised to him her eyes, half sad, half delighted, asking quietly,—
“Is that good, Pan Stas?”
A few minutes later they started. After a fine day there came a night still finer, a little cool, but all bright and silvery from the moon. Pan Stanislav, for whom the day had passed grievously and in vain, breathed now with full breast, and felt almost happy, having before him two beings whom he loved very deeply, and one whom he loved beyond everything on earth. By the light of the moon he saw her face, and it seemed to him mild and peaceful. He thought that Marynia’s feelings must be like her face in that moment; that perhaps her dislike of him was softening amid that general quiet.
Litka dropped into the depth of the seat, and appeared to be sleeping. Pan Stanislav threw a shawl, taken from Pani Emilia, over her feet, and they rode on a while in silence.
Pani Emilia began to speak of Ploshovski, the news of whose death had impressed her deeply.
“There is hidden in all that some unusually sad drama,” said Pan Stanislav; “and Pani Kraslavski may be right in some small degree when she insists that these two deaths are connected.”
“There is in suicide,” said Marynia, “this ghastly thing, that one feels bound to condemn it; and while condemning there is an impression that there should be no sympathy for the misfortune.”
“Sympathy,” answered Pan Stanislav, “should be had for those who have feeling yet,—hence for the living.”
The conversation ceased, and they went on again for some time in silence. After a while Pan Stanislav pointed to the lights in the windows of a house standing in the depth of a forest park, and said,—