“You see the torn paper.”
“I say that, in truth, you are too good.”
She raised her eyes, and, looking at the shelf above the bureau, said,—
“Because the fault was mine. Yes; only mine.”
And, judging that she could not be too magnanimous, she added after a moment, blushing to her ears and dropping her eyes,—
“For, after all, the professor is correct in what he writes about learning.”
Pan Stanislav wanted to kneel down and kiss her feet. Her charm and goodness not only disarmed him, but conquered him thoroughly.
“That I am annihilated is true,” cried he, as if finishing some unexpressed thought with words. “You conquer me utterly.”
She began to shake her head joyously. “Ei! I don’t know; I am such a coward.”
“You a coward? I will tell you an anecdote: In Belgium I knew two young ladies named Wauters, who had a pet cat, a mild creature, mild enough, it would seem, to be put to a wound. Afterward one of the young ladies received a tame hare as a gift. What do you think? The cat was so afraid that from terror he jumped on to every shelf and stove. One day the ladies went to walk; all at once they remembered that the cat was alone with the hare. ‘But will not Matou hurt the hare?’ ‘Matou? Matou is so terrified that he is ready to go out of his skin!’ And they walked on quietly. They came home an hour later. And guess what had happened? They found only the ears of the hare. That is precisely the relation of young ladies to us. They are afraid seemingly; but afterward nothing is left of us but ears.”