"It cannot be that you, who have just seen me for the first time, should conceive such a great desire for that service."
"I had scarcely seen you when I had forgotten myself altogether, and I see that it has come to the soldier hitherto free to be changed to a captive; but such clearly is the will of God. Love is like an arrow which pierces the breast unexpectedly; and now I feel its sting, though yesterday I should not have believed this if any man had told it me."
"If you could not have believed it yesterday, how am I to believe it to-day?"
"Time will convince you best; but you can see my sincerity even now, not only in my words but in my face."
Again the princess raised her eyes, and her glance met the manly and noble face of the young soldier, and his look, so full of rapture that a deep crimson covered her face. But she did not lower her glance, and for a time he drank in the sweetness of those wonderful eyes, and they looked at each other like two beings who, though they have met merely on the highroad through the steppe, feel in a flash that they have chosen each other, and that their souls begin to rush to a meeting like two doves.
The moment of exaltation was disturbed for them by the sharp voice of Constantine's widow calling to the princess. The carriages had arrived. The attendants began to transfer the packages from the carriages, and in a moment everything was ready. Pan Rozvan Ursu, the gracious boyar, gave up his own carriage to the two ladies, the lieutenant mounted his horse, and all moved forward.
The day was nearing its rest. The swollen waters of the Kagamlik were bright with gold of the setting sun, and purple of the evening light. High in the heavens flocks of small clouds reddening drifted slowly to the horizon, as if, tired from flying through the air, they were going to sleep somewhere in an unknown cradle.
Pan Yan rode by the side of Princess Helena, but without conversation, since he could not speak to her before strangers as he had spoken a few moments before, and frivolous words would not pass his lips now. But in his heart he felt happiness, and in his head something sounding as if from wine.
The whole caravan pushed on briskly, and quiet was broken only by the snorting of the horses or the clank of stirrup against stirrup. After a time the escort at the rear wagons began a plaintive Wallachian song; soon, however, they stopped, and immediately the nasal voice of Pan Longin was heard singing piously,--
"In heaven I caused an endless light to dwell,
And mist I spread o'er all the earth."