Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - On the bright shore.djvu/53

 that, she was as indifferent as a stone. Svirski did not note in her either any feeling for mental life, art, or literature. She took from them what she needed, giving nothing in return. He, as an artist and a man of thought, understood perfectly that such a relation betrays at the basis of things a nature which, despite all elegant semblances, is vain, rude, and barbarous. But to him women of that kind had been known from of old. He knew that they impose on the world by a certain force which position and a mighty merciless egotism confers. Of that sort of creature it had been said often in his presence, "A cold, but clever woman." He had always thought of such persons without respect and with contempt. They were to his mind devoid not only of lofty spiritual finish, but of intellect. Beasts have the mind which snatches everything for itself, and leaves nothing to others.

In Pani Elzen, as in Romulus and Remus, he saw a type in which there is no culture below the surface; beneath is an unknown