"You, my Hanusia," he said to her once, after serious quarrel, "would want that I should mount a ladder and stay on the highest round, for a time--Good!--I can! But to stay there forever I could not do any more than I could walk on stilts all the time. Do not imagine that I am something more than I am. I am an ordinary mortal, who only differs from others in this, that he loves you above everything."
"No, Laudie," answered Hanka, "I do not at all desire that you should be some great personage, for I remember that the Englishmen say that an honest man is the noblest work of God."
"I did a little mischief once, but I think I am honest."
"Yes, but remember that not he is honest who does not do evil, but he who does good. In that everything is contained."
"I agree to that. You will teach me that."
"And you me."
"Ha I we will keep house in Jastrzeb and will do all we can. There is much work to be done there and of the kind for which I am fitted. To be a good husbandman, to be good to the people, to instruct them; to teach, love, and enlighten; to be also a good citizen of the country and in case of necessity to die for it--for this, I give my word I am fit. Yes, it is so. And now you have me. But taking everything together, no evil will befall you with me, Hanusia,--I love you too much for any evil to befall you. Only, my golden one, my love, my rosy lady, do not command me to sit on the ladder, for that I cannot do."
His simplicity and sincerity propitiated Hanka. The thought of a joint life in Jastrzeb, of loving the folks whose child she was, of instructing them, of laboring over and for them, cheered and allured her more powerfully than anything else could do. To return to Poland and take charge of a Polish village was the plan which she formulated immediately after the death of the Anney family. And now just such a horizon was opened to her by this former "young lord" whom she loved while yet a simple girl. Therefore she was grateful to him: she was ready in her soul to exalt his good qualities, to exculpate his faults, to love him, and to persevere faithfully at his side, but in exchange she wanted nothing more than that he should love her not only with his senses, but with a true and chaste love, and that he should regard her above all things as his life companion, "for better or for worse."
And, for that reason, whenever there came to her moments in which it seemed to her that he saw in her principally an object for his desires and was unable to find, in himself strength to struggle with them and elevate his feelings to noble heights, doubt seized her heart and she could not resist the thought that he was not such as she would wish him to be.
"But nevertheless," she consoled herself in her soul, "that is a sincere and true nature, and where there is sincerity and truth, everything may be brought to light."