So, also, his words about the happiness awaiting them were only drops overflowing the cup of bitterness, and his caresses affected the aggrieved girl like a child, who the more she is consoled the more disconsolate she becomes. There came to her a moment of weakness and exhaustion. The usual strength deserted her, her nerves were unstrung, and she began to sob, but feeling at the same time ashamed of her tears she buried her face in his breast.
"Hanus, my Hanus!" repeated Ladislaus.
And he began to kiss her light hair. Afterwards clasping her temples with his palms, he raised her tear-stained face and kissed off her tears. She did not defend herself; so after a while he sought with his mouth her quivering lips.
"Hanus! Hanus!" he whispered in a panting voice.
The ferment of desire more and more obscured his reason, obscured his heart, his memory. He drank from the girl's lips while his breath held out, he forgot himself like a drunkard and finally seized her in his arms.
"Hanus! Hanus!"
And it happened that he offended her grievously, that to the humiliation, which she had met that day, he added a new humiliation; to insult, a new insult--that an abyss plainly separated them!
XI
When on the morning of the following day Ladislaus awoke after a brief feverish sleep, he was seized by grief and an insane rage at himself. He recalled everything which had taken place. He remembered that his parting with Hanka the day before was equivalent to being shown the door; there returned to him as a wicked echo his own wretched and dreadful words said in his passion at the time of separation, that if her resistance flowed from fear that later he might break their engagement, then let her know that it was an idle fear. And so he imputed this resistance to miserable motives. And he, a man who prided himself not only upon his good breeding but also upon a subtile sense of honor and personal worthiness--he, Krzycki, could act the way he did and say what he said. In the first moments after opening his eyes, it seemed to him that this was a point-blank impossibility; some kind of a continuation of the nightmare which throttled his slumber, which ought to disappear with the light of day.
But that nightmare was a heavy reality. It was incumbent upon him to take it into account and remedy it in some manner. He sat down to write a letter, in which he smote himself upon the breast, complained, and apologized. He said that no one was able to condemn him as he had condemned himself, and if he dared to beg for forgiveness it was only in hope that perhaps some voice, some echo of the better moments would intercede for him in her heart and would procure for him forgiveness. At the close he begged for an opportunity of repeating in person the words of the letter and for an answer, even in case the sentence pronounced against him was final.