Pani Emilia and Pan Stanislav went then to Litka; while the rest of the company waited in the carriages before the church, for thus Pani Aneta had wished.
Pan Stanislav had a chance to convince himself, at Litka’s grave, how in his soul that child once so beloved had gone into the blue distance and become a shade. Formerly when he visited her grave he rebelled against death, and with all the passion of fresh sorrow was unreconciled to it. To-day it seemed to him well-nigh natural that she was lying in the shadow of those trees, in that cemetery; he had the feeling almost that it must end thus. She had ceased all but completely to be for him a real being, and had become merely a sweet inhabitant of his memory, a sigh, a ray, simply one of that kind of reminiscences which is left by music.
And he would have grown indignant at himself, perhaps, were it not that he saw Pani Emilia rise after her finished prayer with a serene face, with an expression of great tenderness in her eyes, but without tears. He noticed, however, that she looked as sick people look, that she rose from her knees with difficulty, and that in walking she leaned on a stick. In fact, she was at the beginning of a sore disease of the loins, which later on confined her for years to the bed, and only left her at the coffin.
Before the cemetery gate the Osnovskis were waiting for them; Pani Aneta invited them to a betrothal party on the morrow, and then those “who were kind” to Prytulov.
Svirski sat with Pani Emilia in Pan Stanislav’s carriage, and for some time was collecting his impressions in silence; but at last he said,—
“How wonderful this is! To-day at a funeral, to-morrow at a betrothal; what death reaps, love sows,—and that is life!”
CHAPTER XLIX.
Pan Ignas wished the betrothal to be not in the evening before people, but earlier; and his wish was gratified all the more, since Lineta, who wished to show herself to people as already betrothed, supported him before Aunt Bronich. They felt freer thus; and when people began to assemble they appeared as a young couple. The light of happiness shone from Lineta. She found a charm in that rôle of betrothed; and the rôle added charm to her. In her slender form there was something winged. Her eyelids did not fall to-day sleepily over her eyes; those eyes were full of light, her lips of smiles, her face was in blushes. She was so beautiful that Svirski, seeing her, could not refrain from quiet sighs for the lost paradise, and found calmness for his soul only when he remembered his favorite song,—
“I am singing and not sobbing,