"The priest told me the truth when he warned that here a still greater wrong was in store for me."
"In what have I wronged thee?" asked she, bitterly, pained by the sudden change which she saw in him.
But he waded on farther in blindness.
"Had I not seen how thou didst treat this Pan Stanislav, I should think that thou hadst no heart in thy bosom. Thou hast a heart, but for him, not for me. He glanced at thee, and that was sufficient."
Then Yatsek grasped the hair of his head with both hands on a sudden.
"Would to God that I had cut him to pieces!"
A flame flashed, as it were, through Panna Anulka; her cheeks crimsoned, anger blazed in her eyes as well at herself as at Yatsek; because a moment before she had been ready for weeping, her heart was seized now by indignation, deep and sudden.
"You, sir, have lost your senses!" cried she, raising her head and shaking back the tress from her shoulder.
She was on the point of rushing away, but that brought Yatsek to utter desperation; he seized her hands and detained her.
"Not thou art to go. I am the person to go," said he, with set teeth. "And before going I say this to thee: though for years I have loved thee more than health, more than life, and more than my own soul, I will never come back to thee. I will gnaw my own hands off in torture, but, so help me, God, I will never come back to thee!"