"And therefore" (here she pointed to herself) "this one is a stranger, is she not?" asked she, in a low voice.
"Hania! Hania! how canst thou even imagine such a thing?"
"Still it is very natural, though perhaps sad," answered she. "You are looking in your heart for the old brotherly feelings, and do not find them, that is all."
"No, I do not look in my heart for the old Hania, for she is there always; but I look for her in thee, and as to my heart—"
"As to your heart," interrupted she, joyously, "I can guess what has become of it. It has stayed somewhere in Warsaw with some other little heart. That is guessed easily!"
I looked deeply into her eyes. I did not know whether she was quizzing me a little or counting on the impression made on me yesterday, and which I was unable to hide, but she was playing with me somewhat cruelly. All at once a wish to resist was roused in me. I thought that I must have a supremely comical face, looking at her with the expression of a mortally wounded deer; so I mastered my feelings and said, —
"If that is true?"
A visible expression of astonishment, and, as it were, of dissatisfaction, came to her face.
"If that is true," answered she, "it is you who have changed, not I."
She frowned a little, and, looking at me from under her forehead, went on some time in silence. I endeavored to hide the glad emotion with which her words penetrated me. "She says," thought I, "that if I love another, it is I who have changed; therefore it is not she who has changed, she—" And from delight I dared not finish this wise inference.