Page:Nalkowska - Kobiety (Women).djvu/17

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Bowing stiffly, he takes his right foot out of the stirrup, and prepares to dismount.

"You might have failed to see me, and ridden farther. I thought you would," I remark, with a faint uninterested smile.

"As it happened, I did not fail."

"So I see."

"Did you want me to fail?"

"I did."

"For what reason, pray?"

"I was in a very pleasant mood—a sort of pantheistic mingling with Nature, that requires solitude to be enjoyed."

"All the same, I am going to stay," he says with a determined air, and carefully ties his horse's reins to a pine-branch.

A silence follows. Janusz brushes a few pine-cones out of his way, and then seats himself by my side. I sit up likewise, arrange the wreath of corn-flowers on my head, and lean back against a trunk.

"Do you not see that we are at odds?" he asks at length.

"That may very well be," I answer with some disdain. "And how did you find out where I was?"

"I followed you."