"You are at heart a Pole, not a Cossack, if you will not constrain the girl in Cossack fashion--"
"That I were a Pole, that I were a Pole!" cried Bogun, grasping the cap on his head with both hands, for pain had seized him.
"The Polish woman must have bewitched you," muttered Horpyna.
"Ai! if she has not," answered he, sadly, "may the first bullet not pass me; may I finish my wretched life on the empaling stake! I love one in the world, and that one does not love me!"
"Fool!" cried Horpyna, with anger; "but you have got her!"
"Hold your tongue!" cried he, with rage. "If she lays hands on herself, then what? I'll tear you apart and then myself. I'll break my head against a rock, I'll gnaw people like a dog. I would have given my soul for her, Cossack fame. I would have fled beyond the Yagorlik from the regiments to the end of the earth, to live with her, to die at her side. That's what I would have done. But she stabbed herself with a knife, and through whom? Through me! She stabbed herself with a knife! Do you hear?"
"That's nothing. She will not die."
"If she dies, I will nail you to the door."
"You have no power over her."
"I have none, I have none. Would she had stabbed me,--it would have been better had she killed me!"