Page:Zakhar Berkut(1944).djvu/95

 panorama, enthralled by the evenly undulating contours of the mountain masses resembling wooly lambs with their covering of dark-green forests, and reveling in the lucent green canopy of rolling downs and wolds.

“What a magnificent view, father!” exclaimed her vibrant, melodious voice when their horses tarried a moment at a narrow bend in the uphill pass over which they were laboriously travelling in order to reach their destination before complete darkness set in. “What a beautiful region!” she repeated, in a lower, more subdued tone, gazing backward, indicating with her glance the vast reaches of the darkening valley.

“And what despicable people inhabit that region!” cut in the the other rider bitterly.

“You shouldn’t say that, father!” she defended hotly and at once became embarrassed and noticeably lowering her voice she added, “I don’t know, but I personally have found those people very likeable.”

“Oh, I know that YOU like them!” cried the other rider reprovingly, “and particularly that you’ve taken a very great fancy to one of the worst among them, that abominable Berkut! Oh, I realize that you’re ready to even forsake your own father for him; that you’ve already stopped loving me because of him! But what can I do when it seems faithlessness is part of the very nature of daughters! But I warn you girl, beware! Don’t trust that glossy exterior! Don’t trust a snake no matter how attractive a color it assumes.”

“Father, father, what awful ideas you entertain! How cruelly you accuse me! I have confessed to you that I love Maxim and I have vowed before the sun that I will be his. However, I do not belong to him yet, but to you. And even when I am his, I will not stop loving you, never, father, never!”

“Foolish girl, you will not be his, there’s no use even thinking about it! Have you forgotten that you are a boyar’s daughter and he a peasant lout, a shepherd?”