Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/50

 taken one from you,’ Lukas tried to conciliate her, while he did not seem disinclined to repeat the offence.

‘I don’t say it is the first time, but previously you were free. It was no one’s concern if I didn’t mind. But now you still belong to your dead wife.’

But Lukas would not hear of such a thing, and strongly resented the inference. ‘Oh no, I have been mourning my wife as I should, from her funeral to the last mass for her soul this day. I haven’t spoken of you once all that time, nor looked at you till after I had told old Martinka to let you know what I was going to do. At mid-day I publicly drowned my sorrow at the inn with my friends, and all that is now over and done with. Ask whom you will, they will all tell you that I am as good as a bachelor.’

‘I don’t ask other people what I ought to do or not to do, and no one need tell me, because I always know my own mind. And I tell you that I am not going to be made love to under your roof where the feet of your dead wife have barely grown cold. I don’t care if the whole world should prove to me that I am in the wrong. There’s time enough for that sort of thing after the wedding when we two