Hania

by Henryk Sienkiewicz

"But I," thought he, "will go devilish far!"

Meanwhile from a distance Nice rose before him in the form of a bundle of lights. In the middle of that bundle was the building called "Jetée Promenade," which gleamed in the form of a gigantic lighthouse. As the boat, urged by a strong breeze, approached the harbor, every one of those lights changed, as it were, into a pillar of fire, which quivered on the moving water near the shore. The sight of these gleams sobered Svirski.

"The city!—and life!" thought he.

And at once his former plans began to fall apart like dream-visions born of night and emptiness. That which a moment earlier he thought justifiable, necessary, and easy of accomplishment, seemed a whim devoid of the essence of reality, and in part dishonest. "With life, whatever it be, one must reckon. Whoso has lived under its laws the years that I have, must feel responsible to it. It is no great thing to say to one's self: I used them as long as they were pleasant, but the moment they were painful I went back to nature."

Then he fell to thinking more connectedly, not of general theories, but of Pani Elzen.

"By what right could I leave her? If her life has been artificial and false, if her past is not clear, I, who knew that, might have refrained from proposing. At present I could have the right to break with her only in case I discovered in her evil which she concealed, or if she committed some fault touching me. But she has committed no fault of that sort. She has been honest and sincere with me. Besides, there is something in her which attracts me; if not, I should not have proposed. At moments I feel that I love her; and because doubt comes at times on me, must she be the sufferer? My flight would in every case be an injustice to the woman, and who knows that it would not be a blow."

He understood now, that to think of flight and permit it are, for a decent man, two opposite poles. He could only think of it. He could appear before the eyes of Pani Elzen more easily, and ask her to return his word to him; but to flee from danger was a thing directly opposed to his personal nature and the character of his stock, which was thoroughly civilized. Besides, at the very thought of doing injustice to a woman, the heart quivered in him; and Pani Elzen grew nearer and dearer to him.

They had sailed almost into the harbor; and a moment later the boat arrived. Svirski paid, and taking a seat in a carriage, gave directions to drive to his studio. On the street, amid the glare of lamps, the noise and the movement, he was carried away again by a yearning for that quiet, that endless spread of water, that calmness, that boundless truth of God, from which he had parted a moment before. At last, when he was near the studio, the following idea came to his head: "It is a marvellous thing that I, who feared women so much, and was so distrustful of them, have in the end of ends chosen one capable of rousing more fear than all the others."

There was in that a certain fatality, as it were; and Svirski would have found beyond doubt in that concourse of things material for meditation during a whole evening, had it not been that as he entered the servant gave him two letters. In one, was an invitation to the ball of the following day on board the "Formidable," the other was from Pani Lageat, the owner of the house.

She informed him of her departure in a couple of days for Marseilles, and at the same time told him that she had found a model who ought to satisfy his most extravagant taste, and who would come the next morning.