Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/614

 176 brother at Plotsk and taken the princess; he abandoned his plan, therefore, of visiting Warsaw, where the court physician might save the sick woman. He must go to Spyhov, and to him this was terrible, for he thought that all was ending, and that he would take only a corpse home to Yurand.

But just a few hours of road before Spyhov a brighter ray of hope struck his heart again. Danusia's cheeks grew pale, her eyes became less dull, her breath, not so loud, was less hurried. Zbyshko saw this at once and soon commanded the last halt so that she might rest the more quietly. They were about five miles from Spyhov, far from human dwellings, on a narrow road between a field and a meadow. But a wild pear-tree standing near-by offered shelter from the sunrays; they halted, therefore, under its branches. The attendants dismounted and unbridled their horses, so that the beasts might eat grass more easily. Two women occupied in serving Danusia, and the youths who carried her, wearied by the road and by heat, lay down in the shade and fell asleep quickly. Zbyshko alone watched at the litter, and sitting on the roots of the pear-tree did not take his eyes from the sick woman.

She lay there in the afternoon silence, motionless, with closed eyelids. But to Zbyshko it seemed that she was not sleeping. Indeed, when at the other end of the broad meadow a man who was mowing stopped and began to sharpen his scythe with a whetstone, she quivered slightly, opened her eyes for an instant, and closed them; her breast rose as if with a deeper breathing, and from her lips came a barely audible whisper,—

"Sweet flowers."

Those were the first words not feverish and not wandering which she had uttered since the beginning of the journey; indeed from the meadow warmed by the sun the breeze brought a really strong perfume, in which were felt hay and honey with various fragrant plants. So Zbyshko's heart trembled from delight at the thought that consciousness was returning to the sick woman.

In his first rapture he wished to cast himself at her feet, but fear that he might frighten her restrained him, and he only knelt at the litter, bent over her, and said quietly,—

"Danusia! Danusia!"

She opened her eyes, looked at him some time, then a smile brightened her features, and she said "Zbyshko," just as she had in the tarburners' hut, but with far greater