On this day the weather, which had been fine from the first, became absolutely perfect. From sunrise to sunset no cloud appeared upon the face of the blue heavens; yet it was not too sultry. A tiny zephyr blew with seductive sweetness, and the late heavy rain prevented there being too much dust.
It was a day charged with oppressive silence between the traveling pair. Until last night Felix had been the one to hold off—Rona had been wistfully anxious to be friends. But now her coldness redoubled his own. She was as reluctant to speak as he, and what she said was more frozen. In truth, her own thoughts, her own emotions, were a greater puzzle to herself than they could be to anyone else.
She hardly dared look at Felix, except when she felt sure that his back was turned. But once, while they were eating their breakfast, she surprised his eyes upon her, and with an intentness which made her positively faint. She shuddered, with a kind of agony which was half bliss. Had she known it, her beauty that radiant day was enough to make a strong man weak.
The warm color of her hair, the rose stain upon her cheeks, and the new, strange light within her eyes, made her perilously attractive. They were young together, in so fair a world! Ah, if the barrier might but be swept away, so that they could talk heart to heart!
His questions as to her health, and whether her injury had prevented her sleeping, were miserably constrained, and her replies but just escaped the charge of rudeness.
They ate, almost in silence, and as soon as they started again, he lay down to sleep, upon the couch where she had rested all night, and which was still fragrant with a memory of her, in some hardly perceptible perfume.
Again it was long, very long, before the young man's eyes closed; and then he fell so soundly asleep, that he exceeded his usual six hours, and it was past four o'clock when at last he awoke.
That evening they came to a forest. It is the only one upon the route; and it makes a grateful change from the endless waste of treeless steppe.
Felix had been awake for the past hour, seated with his chin propped upon his hands, gazing before him with white face and glittering eyes.
It was now within two hours of sunset, and the rose-colored rays from the west burnt in among the foliage of the graceful birches, till they seemed like trees of silver and gold, seen in vision. One of the horses of their troika had been going badly for some time; and when they were in among the trees the driver turned to Felix and said something to him.