“I am sitting.”
“You are a traitor, a Judas!”
“Not true, for when I kiss ’tis with sincerity,—will you be convinced?”
“You are a serpent!”
Panna Aleksandra laughed, however, and a halo of youth and gladness came from her. His nostrils quivered like the nostrils of a young steed of noble blood.
“Ai! ai!” said he. “What eyes, what a face! Save me, all ye saints, for I cannot keep away!”
“There is no reason to summon the saints. You were absent four years without once looking in here; sit still now!”
“But I knew only the counterfeit. I will have that painter put in tar and then in feathers, and scourge him through the square of Upita. I will tell all in sincerity,—forgive, if it please you; if not, take my head. I thought to myself when looking at that portrait: ‘A pretty little rogue, pretty; but there is no lack of pretty ones in the world. I have time.’ My late father urged me hither, but I had always one answer: ‘I have time! The little wife will not vanish; maidens go not to war and do not perish.’ I was not opposed at all to the will of my father, God is my witness; but I wanted first to know war and feel it on my own body. This moment I see my folly. I might have married and gone to war afterward; and here every delight was waiting for me. Praise be to God that they did not hack me to death! Permit me to kiss your hand.”
“Better, I’ll not permit.”
“Then I will not ask. In Orsha we say, ‘Ask; but if they don’t give, take it thyself.’”