"Do you want to see the storm?" I asked Aniela.
"Very well. Where from?"
"Come into the next room, there is a larger window."
We went and stood at the window. It was very dark then, and every moment white and red forks of lightning tore across the clouds, opening the skies and at the same time illuminating our faces and the dark world without. Aniela was calm, but seemed every moment more desirable.
"Are you afraid?" I whispered.
"No."
"Give me your hand."
She looked at me wonderingly. Another moment and I should have folded her in my arms and pressed my lips against hers, and then let Ploszow be razed to the ground, by the tempest. But she was terrified, not by the storm, but by the expression of my face and that whisper; she drew back from the window and returned to the room where the elder ladies were sitting.
I remained alone,—with a feeling of anger and humiliation. That I should have taken advantage of Aniela's confidence is quite certain, and yet I felt offended by her want of trust, and resolved to pay her out in some way. I stood for an hour at the window looking absently at the lightning flashes. Then it grew lighter and lighter outside; at last the clouds parted, and the sun shone forth fresh and bright and as if wondering at the devastation the tempest had wrought.
It was very considerable; the avenues were still flooded with yellow, foaming water, above which floated broken branches. Here and there big trees were lying about, snapped across or torn out by the roots; the bark was partly stripped from the trunks of pine trees, leaving what looked like gaping wounds. Everywhere the eye could reach there was ruin and devastation, as if after a battle.