Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - In Vain.djvu/35

Rh inexplicably. In that lay her charm. She was statuesque to the highest degree, but to the highest degree also a woman. She attracted and also repelled. Gustav felt this best. It was difficult to reconcile with that cold torpor the impression which she produced, which seemed as it were not of her, but aside from her.

She was like a sleeping flower; pain had so put her to sleep. In reality the blows which she had received were like strokes of an axe on the head. Let us remember that in the career of the woman brief moments of happiness were closed by two coffins. As a maiden she had loved; he whom she had loved was no longer alive. As a wife she had given birth to a child; the child was dead. That which law had given her, which had been the cause and effect of her life, had vanished. Thenceforth she ceased to live, she only existed. Imagine a plant which is cut at the top and the root; such was Helena. Torn from the past and debarred from the future, at first she bore within her a dim belief that a shameful injustice had been wrought on her. At the moment of her pain she threw out, it is difficult to know at whom, this question, as unfathomable as the bottomless pit: