“How is Litka to-day?”
“As usual.”
“Has the doctor been here?”
“Yes. He found nothing new. Let me help you!”
Saying this, he wished to take her cloak, but she was unwilling to accept his services, and refused. Having his heart full of the previous talk with Litka, he attacked her most unexpectedly,—
“What I offer you is simple politeness, nothing more; and even if it were something more, you might leave your repugnance to me outside this threshold, for inside is a sick child, whom not only I, but you, profess to love. Your response lacks not merely kindness, but even courtesy. I would take in the same way the cloak of any other woman, and know that at present I am thinking of Litka, and of nothing else.”
He spoke with great passionateness, so that, attacked suddenly, Marynia was a little frightened; indeed, she lost her head somewhat, so that obediently she let her cloak be taken from her, and not only did not find in herself the force to be offended, but she felt that a man sincerely and deeply affected by alarm and suffering might talk so, therefore a man who was really full of feeling and was good at heart. Perhaps, too, that unexpected energy of his spoke to her feminine nature; it is enough that Pan Stanislav gained on her more in that moment than at any time since their meeting at Kremen, and never till then was she so strongly reminded of that active young man whom she had conducted once through the garden. The impression, it is true, was a mere passing one, which could not decide their mutual relations; but she raised at once on him her eyes, somewhat astonished, but not angry, and said,—
“I beg your pardon.”
He had calmed himself, and was abashed now.
“No; I beg pardon of you. Just now Litka spoke of her death to me, and I am so excited that I cannot control myself; pray understand this, and forgive me.”