Smilowicz’s attention was drawn off by it.
“What beasts they are!” he said at last, to relieve his feelings.
“They are not malicious, but unhappy,” she said. “For them too, I feel sorry.”
Smilowicz made no reply. Presently he was trying to persuade me to go over and see Obojanski one of these days.
“Always plunged in those books of his—overhead and ears in them—indifferent to everything else that goes on throughout the wide world. His study seems to me now such a haven as one might dream for.... Yes, let us go one day and visit him, Miss Janina.”
Really, no bad notion, that. As to Smilowicz’s surroundings, they do not agree with me. Since I have got rid of all such associations, I do not care to return to them. And then, that woman! Willingly would I throw her out of the window to the Idealistic dreamer of the noble New Woman, equal to Man; and I should cry Ecce femina! Like Diogenes throwing the plucked cock to Plato.
Yes; for the vision of the Idealist is realized—thus!
But Obojanski, the venerable, grey-bearded Master, with his mien of a Greek sage; and his never-ending, shallow sophistries and cheap disputes upon matters of the highest import; and even his many volumes of monographs on insects—all this has something that to me is singularly attracting!
To-day, tenderness and mutual vows once more.... Ay, we shall love, love, love each other till....
“Listen, Witold; for how long are we to be in love so?” I asked; a question I myself had not expected to put.