Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - On the bright shore.djvu/55

 artist. The boys were good-looking, even beautiful; Svirski, however, felt, with his subtle artistic sense, that in those two bird skulls, which resembled each other, and in those faces, the beauty was not inherited through a series of generations, but was as if by accident, by physical chance, which had come from their twinship. In vain did he say to himself that their mother too was beautiful; the feeling adhered to him always that that beauty did not belong to the mother or the sons, and that in this, as in the question of property, they were parvenus. It was only after long intercourse with them that this impression was weakened.

Pani Elzen, from the beginning of their acquaintance, commenced to prefer Svirski and to attract him. He was of more value to her than the rest of her acquaintances; he bore a good family name; he had considerable property and a great reputation. He lacked youth, it is true; but Pani Elzen herself was thirty-five years of age, and his form of a Hercules might take the place of