Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - In Vain.djvu/78

66 with his lips, and almost suffered from excess of delight.

After that came awakening.

He saw her daily,—he was so near to her and always so distant.

He grew thinner and more emaciated; in his eyes shone feverish gleams of unbending will. That fever exhausted him, but kept him on his feet.

"I am curious to know what will come of this," muttered he through his parched lips.

But there was one side almost sublime in this gloomy exertion of suffering. Gustav was not dreaming. He took life as it was, not as it might be. In spite of the sad condition of his health, he knew how to work, and worked more than ever. To come from Pani Helena and sit down to toil needed no common strength,—such victories he won over his own nature daily. He gathered about him a number of the most capable men, and as it were to compare them with the assemblies at Vasilkevich's, he organized a circle laboring only scientifically. He and two fellow-students were writing a grammar of the Lettish languages; in spite of continual disputes with his coworkers, he stood at the head of this labor, and what he stole from suffering he gave to it.