“Rosettes. They are sewed to various costumes.”
After a while she added,—
“But this is far more interesting,—what are you doing? Do you know that all Warsaw is marrying you to Lineta Castelli? They have seen you both in the theatre, at the races; they see you at the promenades; and it is impossible to persuade them that the affair is not decided already.”
“Since I have spoken with you so openly, I will tell you now that it is almost decided.”
Marynia raised to him eyes enlivened with a smile and with curiosity.
“Is that true? Ah, that is a perfect piece of news! May God give you such happiness as we wish you!”
Then she stretched her hand to him, and afterward inquired with roused curiosity,—
“Have you spoken with Lineta?”
Pan Ignas told her how it was, and acknowledged his conversation with Lineta and with Osnovski; then, letting himself be borne away in the narrative, he confessed everything that had happened to him—how, from the beginning, he had observed, criticised, and struggled with himself; how he had not dared to hope; how he had tried to drive that feeling from his head, or rather, from his heart, and how he could not resist it. He assured her that he had promised himself a number of times to cut short the acquaintance and the visits, but strength failed him each time; each time he saw with amazement that the whole world, the whole object of his life, was there; that without her, without Lineta, he would not know what to do with his life—and he went back to her.
Pan Ignas had not observed himself less truthfully, but he criticised and struggled less than he said. He spoke sincerely, however. He added at the end that he knew with certainty that he loved, not his own feelings involved in Lineta, but Lineta herself, for herself, and that she was the dearest person on earth to him.