“I cannot, I cannot.”
“Then there is no success for me here, as elsewhere there was none. My worthy lady, offer not pay for services, I have not come for that; and if I ask your hand it is not as pay, but from your own good-will. Were you to say that you give it because you must, I would not take it. Where there is no freedom there is no happiness. You have disdained me. God grant that a worse do not meet you. I go from this house as I entered, save this that I shall not come here again. I am accounted here as nobody. Well, let it be so. Be happy even with that very Kmita, for perhaps you are angry because I placed a sabre between you. If he seems better to you, then in truth you are not for me.”
Olenka seized her temples with her hands, and repeated a number of times: “O God! O God! O God!”
But that pain of hers made no impression on Volodyovski, who, when he had bowed, went out angry and wrathful; then he mounted at once and rode off.
“A foot of mine shall never stand there again!” said he, aloud.
His attendant Syruts riding behind pushed up at once. “What does your grace say?”
“Blockhead!” answered Volodyovski.
“You told me that when we were coming hither.”
Silence followed; then Volodyovski began to mutter again: “Ah, I was entertained there with ingratitude, paid for affection with contempt. It will come to me surely to serve in the cavalry till death; that is fated. Such a devil of a lot fell to me,—every move a refusal! There is no justice on earth. What did she find against me?”
Here Pan Michael frowned, and began to work mightily with his brain; all at once he slapped his leg with his hand. “I know now,” shouted he; “she loves that fellow yet,—it cannot be otherwise.”