"You do attach importance to it, madame, you do, and so do I, and those ladies only pretend that they do not--that young Englishwoman as well as even that translucent little porcelain maid; though apparently she thinks of nought but music.... Perhaps the least of all Pani Zosia, but only because from a certain time she too sedulously reads Plato."
"Zosia--Plato!" exclaimed Pani Krzycki.
"I suspect so, and even am certain for otherwise she would not be so Platonic."
"Why, she is not versed in Greek."
"But Gronski is, and he can translate for her."
Pani Krzycki gazed with astonishment at Swidwicki and broke off the conversation. Becoming acquainted with him only that evening and having no idea that he was a man who, for a quip, for a wretched play on words and from habit, was ready always and everywhere to talk stuff and nonsense in the most reckless manner, she could not understand why he said that to her. Nevertheless his words were for her, as it were, a ray illuminating things which heretofore she had not observed. She found new proofs that her heartfelt and secret wishes would always remain a dream without substance--and she sighed for the third time.
"Ah, then it is so," she thought to herself in her soul.
"Yes, yes," Swidwicki continued. "My cousin is very Platonic and in addition a trifle anæmic."
In his laughter there was a kind of bitterness and even malice, so that Pani Krzycki again looked at him with astonishment.
In the meantime Marynia led Miss Anney to another chamber. Her ears each moment became redder and her eyes sparkled with a perfectly childish curiosity. So pressing her little nose to Miss Anney's cheek, she began to whisper: