Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/161

Rh your comrades, your fatherland call you,—and we are your enemies."

"And what are my father, my comrades, my fatherland to me?" said Andríi, shaking his head with a quick movement, and straightening up his young figure like a poplar beside the river. "Be that as it may, I have no one, no one, no one!" he repeated with the same voice and movement of the hand wherewith the buoyant, irrepressible kazák expresses his determination to do some unheard-of deed, impossible to any other man. "Who has said that my fatherland is the Ukraina? Who gave it to me for my country? Our fatherland is the one our spirit longs for, the one which is dearest of all to it. My country is—you! That is my fatherland, and that land I bear in my heart. I shall bear it there all my life long, and I will see whether any of the kazáks can tear it thence. And I will renounce everything, barter everything, I will lose myself for that country!"

Petrified for an instant, she gazed into his eyes like a beautiful statue, and suddenly burst out sobbing; and with that wonderful feminine impetuosity, of which only grand-souled, uncalculating women, created for fine impulses are capable, she threw herself upon his neck, encircling it with her wondrous, snowy arms, and fell to weeping. At that moment indistinct shouts rang out in the