Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/158

152 taking her satin hand. A sparkling fire coursed through his veins at the touch, and he pressed the hand which lay apathetically in his own.

But she maintained silence, never taking the kerchief from her face, and remained motionless.

"Why are you so sad? Tell me, why are you so sad?"

She cast aside the handkerchief, pushed back her long hair which fell over her eyes, and poured out her heart in mournful speech, in a quiet voice like the breeze which, arising on a beautiful evening, suddenly blows through a dense growth of reeds beside the stream; they rustle, murmur, and suddenly begin to emit delicately-sad sounds, and the wayfarer, pausing, in inexplicable melancholy, catches them and heeds neither the fading light nor the gay songs of the people which float past as they stray homeward from their labours in meadow and stubble-field, nor the distant rumble of a passing cart.

"Am not I worthy of eternal pity? Is not the mother who brought me into the world unhappy? Is it not a bitter fate which has fallen to my share? Art not thou a cruel executioner, my grim Fate? Thou hast brought all to my feet,—the highest nobles in the land, the wealthiest gentlemen. Counts and foreign Barons, and all the flower of our knighthood. All these were free to love me,