“If thou wert better acquainted with women, thou wouldst be glad that I did not let it go to marriage. Thou dost not know her. She is just like a stick, and, besides, is malicious in character. Dost thou not understand that I told thee to pay court to her out of regard to people, and to Yozio? Otherwise, how explain thy daily visits?”
“I could understand, wert thou other than thou art.”
“Do not oppose me. I have fixed all, as thou seest, to keep thy portrait from being finished, and give thee a chance to visit Prytulov. Steftsia Ratkovski, a distant relative of Yozio’s, will be there soon. Dost understand? Thou must pretend that she pleases thee; and I will talk what I like into Yozio. In this way thou wilt be able to stop at Prytulov. I have written to Panna Ratkovski already. She is not a beauty, but agreeable.”
“Always pretence, and nothing for it.”
“Suppose I should say to thee: Don’t come.”
“Anetka!”
“Then be patient. I cannot be angry long with thee. But now go thy way. Amuse Pani Mashko.”
And a moment later Pani Aneta was alone. Her eyes followed Kopovski a while with the remnant of her anger, but also with a certain tenderness. In the white cravat, with his dark tint of face, he was so killingly beautiful that she could not gaze at him sufficiently. Lineta was now the betrothed of another; still the thought seemed unendurable that that daily rival of hers might possess him, if not as husband, as lover. Pani Aneta, in telling Kopovski that she would yield him to any other rather than to Castelka, told the pure truth. That was for her a question, at once of an immense weakness for that dull Endymion, and a question of self-love. Her nerves simply could not agree to it. Certain inclinations of the senses, which she herself looked on as lofty, and rising from a Grecian nature, but which at the root of the matter were common, took the place in her of morality and conscience. By virtue of these inclinations, she fell under the irresistible charm of Kopovski; but having not only a heated head, but a temperament of fishy coldness, she preferred, as Pan Ignas divined intuitively, the play with evil to evil itself. Holding, in her way, to the principle, “If not I, then no one!” she was ready to push matters to the utmost to prevent the marriage of Kopovski to Lineta, the more since she saw that Lineta, in spite of all her “words” about Kopovski, in spite of the irony with which she had mentioned him and her jests about the man, was also under the charm of his exceptional beauty; that all those jests were simply self-provocation, under which was concealed an attraction; and that, in general, the source of her pleasure and Lineta’s was the same. But she did not observe that, for this reason, she at the bottom of her soul had contempt for Lineta.
She knew that Lineta, through very vanity, would not oppose her persuasion, and the homages of a man with a famous name. In this way, she had retained Kopovski, and, besides, had produced for herself a splendid spectacle, on which women, who are more eager for impressions than feelings, look always with greediness. Besides, if that famous Pan Ignas, when his wife becomes an every-day object, should look somewhere for a Beatrice, he might find her. Little is denied men who have power to hand down, to the memory of mankind and the homage of ages, the name of a loved one. These plans for the future Pani Aneta had not outlined hitherto expressly; but she had, as it were, a misty feeling that her triumph would in that case be perfect.
Moreover, she had triumphed even now, for all had gone as she wished. Still Kopovski made her angry. She had considered him as almost her property. Meanwhile, she saw that, so far as he was able to understand anything, he understood this, that the head does not ache from abundance, and that Aneta might not hinder Lineta. That roused her so keenly that at moments she was thinking how to torment him in return. Meanwhile, she was glad that Lineta paraded herself as being in love really, soul and heart, with Pan Ignas, which for Kopovski was at once both a riddle and a torture.