Lineta raised her eyes, and said after a while,—

“How wonderful all this is!”

“What, Nitechka?”

“That it begins somehow, and begins as if it were a kind of trial, a kind of play; then one goes farther into it, and all at once the trap falls.”

Pan Ignas pressed her arm to his bosom, and said,—

“Ah, yes! it has fallen! I have my bright maiden, and I won’t let her go.”

Then, walking on, they came to the great drawing-room.

Pan Ignas pointed to the glass door, and said,—

“Our balcony, our acacia-tree.”

It grew darker and darker. Objects in the room were sunk in shade; only here and there, on golden picture frames, gleamed points of light, like eyes of some kind gazing at the young couple.