“Let us go home now,” I say after a short silence; “but you must let me ride your horse.”
“With the utmost pleasure; but then, how will you manage for a saddle?”
“Oh, that’s all right. Even on your saddle, I can contrive to ride woman-fashion. Only you will have to arrange the stirrup.”
I leap into the saddle, my foot just touching his hand. Janusz himself settles it in the stirrup, which he shortens for me. As he does so, I once more see a glow sweep over his face.
“Pray allow me to lead the horse. It is restive, and may throw you.”
“No, thanks; I am not in the least afraid.”
On a sudden, with an unexpected movement, he catches hold of me, and presses his face hard against my knees.
At the same instant nearly, I give the horse a smart blow with my whip, and gallop away, not looking behind me; it is not easy to keep my balance on that saddle.
This I have done, not to escape from him, nor as being in any sort of fear. It was only that he should not perceive my flushed face—flushed neither with indignation nor with shame.
Janusz has gone to L. for some days. I am alone with Martha, with whom I enjoy myself very much. There is no one else on earth with whom I can share the delight of reading together wise and beautiful books. As we read, we become lost in mutual admiration at the depth and subtlety of the remarks we make: whence arises a delightful state of mind in which each loses consciousness of the other being present. Our impressions are equally instantaneous, equally immediate; a look, a gesture, suffices for one to understand the other. We are growing absolutely similar, all but identical. Set apart from all that surrounds us, our minds meet on dizzy heights, spanned by aërial bridges which bring our souls together, over the tremendous gulfs that stretch beneath us; thereon few can walk, for the bridges are of gossamer threads. In the valleys of the mind it is not hard for two souls to come together; but as one reaches the mountain-tops, each is farther and farther apart, and the chasm between them becomes more and more profound; besides, at the tread of the first ponderous foot, those bridges of cunning workmanship, running from peak to peak, are broken and fall to pieces.