Pan Ignas, when he woke and returned to real life, understood that moments like those, in which hearts melt in that pantheism of love, and beat with the same pulsation with which everything quivers that loves, unites, and harmonizes in the universe, form the highest happiness which love has the power to give, and so immeasurable that were they to continue they would of necessity destroy man’s individuality. But, having the soul of an idealist, he thought that when death comes and frees the human monad from matter, those moments change into eternity; and in that way he imagined heaven, in which nothing is swallowed up, but everything simply united and attuned in universal harmony.
Lineta, it is true, could not move with his flight; but she felt a certain turning of the head, as it were, a kind of intoxication from his flight, and she felt herself happy also. A woman even incapable of loving a man is still fond of her love, or, at least, of herself, and her rôle in it; and, therefore, most frequently she crosses the threshold of betrothal with delight, feeling at the same time gratitude to the man who opens before her a new horizon of life. Besides, they had talked love into Lineta so mightily that at last she believed in it.
And once, when Pan Ignas asked her if she was sure of herself and her heart, she gave him both hands, as if with effusion, and said,—
“Oh, truly; now I know that I love.”
He pressed her slender fingers to his lips, to his forehead, and his eyes, as something sacred; but he was disquieted by her words, and asked,—
“Why ‘now’ for the first time, Nitechka? Or has there been a moment in which thou hast thought that thou couldst not love me?”
Lineta raised her blue eyes and thought a moment; after a while, in the corners of her mouth and in the dimples of her cheeks, a smile began to gather.
“No,” said she; “but I am a great coward, so I was afraid. I understand that to love you is another thing from loving the first comer.” And suddenly she began to laugh. “Oh, to love Pan Kopovski would be as simple as bon jour; but you—maybe I cannot express it well, but more than once it seemed to me that that is like going up on some mountain or some tower. When once at the top, a whole world is visible; but before that one must go and go, and toil, and I am so lazy.”
Pan Ignas, who was tall and bony, straightened himself, and said,—
“When my dear, lazy one is tired, I’ll take her in my arms, like a child, and carry her even to the highest.”