Yosef turned a severe face toward him and said,—
"To-day thou wilt move into my lodgings."
Meanwhile another drama was played in Pani Helena's lodgings. She was a most peculiar person; she could not exist, she knew not how to exist, without attaching her life to some feeling. Her first chance had been fortunate; she proved a model wife and mother. It had seemed to her that she found salvation in Yosef, and now months had passed since she had seen him; and she desired him the more, the more persistently Gustav resisted.
The last struggle of these directly opposing forces had to come.
"If thou wilt not return him to me," said the widow in tears, one evening, "I will go myself to find him. I am ready to kneel down before thee and beg on my knees for him, Gustav! Thou sayest that Kazimir begged thee to have care over me; so I implore thee in his name. O God, O God! Thou dost not understand that it is possible to suffer; thou hast never loved, of course."
"I, Pani! have never loved?" repeated Gustav, in a very low voice; and in his eyes real pain was evident. "Perhaps thou art speaking the truth. Then thou hast observed nothing, hast seen nothing? I know not myself that I have loved any one except—O God, what do I utter!—except thee alone."
He threw himself at Helena's feet.
Great silence followed. One might have said that the two persons had become stone,—she bent backward, with her hands over her face, he at her feet. They continued in this posture, both oblivious of everything around them. But a moment comes when the greatest pain is conquered.
He rose soon, a new man; he was very calm. He roused her, and spoke in a low voice, interrupted through a lack of breath.
"Pardon me, Helena! I should not have done this, but thou seest I have been suffering so long. This is the third year since I saw thee the first time—I saw thee in a church; the priest was just elevating the chalice, and thou wert inclining—I visited that church afterward, I saw thee more frequently, and, pardon me! I myself cannot tell how it happened. Afterward thou didst become his wife—I said nothing. And this time I did not wish to offend or annoy thee, but thou sayest that I have never loved. Thou seest that that is not true. How hard it is to renounce the last hope! Pardon me! Pan Yosef will come to-day to thee—he is a man of noble nature, love him, be happy—and farewell."