Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/517

Rh both tears and a dreamy expression, and dropping her lids, she stood before him bright as an apple blossom, and speechless.

For Yagenka, Hlava felt, besides the profoundest attachment, both reverence and honor, but he dared not rise to her in thought; as to Anulka, since he felt hot blood in his veins, he could not escape her enchantment. Now her beauty seized him by the heart, and especially her tears and confusion, through which love appeared, as the golden bed of a river appears through clear water. So he turned to her.

"You know that I am going to the war," said he; "perhaps I shall fall in it. Do you grieve for me?"

"I grieve!" answered she, in a thin, girlish voice.

And that instant she began to shed tears, for she had them always in readiness. Hlava was moved to the uttermost and fell to kissing her hands, repressing, in presence of Yagenka, the desire for still more intimate kisses.

"Gird him, or give him a remembrance for the journey so that he may fight under your ensign," said Yagenka. But it was not easy for Anulka to give him anything, for she was wearing a man's dress. She began to search; neither a ribbon nor a knot of any kind. The dresses of the two women were still in bark boxes, unopened since they had left Zgorzelitse; she fell therefore into no small anxiety, from which Yagenka relieved her by advising to give him her head net.

"In God's name! let it be the net!" said Hlava, rejoiced somewhat. "I will put it on my helmet—and unhappy will the mother of that German be who tries to remove it!"

Anulka raised both hands to her head, and after a little, bright streams of hair were scattered over her neck and shoulders; when Hlava looked at her thus, dishevelled and charming, his face changed. His cheeks flushed, and then he grew pale; he took the net, kissed it, and put it in his bosom, embraced still again the knees of Yagenka, and then Anulka with greater energy than was needed.

"Let it be that way!" said he, and went out of the room without uttering another syllable.

Though he was road-weary and unrefreshed, he did not lie down to sleep; he drank to kill that night, with the two nobles from Lenkavitsa, who were going to Jmud with him. But he did not lose his head; at the first dawn he was in the courtyard, where horses were waiting, ready saddled.