Panna Anulka returned to her room filled with gratitude toward her guardian, who up to that hour had never spoken to her with such kindness; and at the same time she was disenchanted, embittered, and disgusted with the world and with people. In the first moment she could not and knew not how to think calmly; she had only the feeling that a grievous wrong had been done her, a great injustice, and that an awfully keen disappointment had struck her.
For her love, for her sorrow, for her yearning, for all that she had done to bind the broken threads together, her only reward was a hateful suspicion. And there was no remedy. She could not, of course, write to Yatsek a second time, to justify herself and explain the position. A blush of shame and humiliation covered her face at the mere thought of this. Besides, she was almost sure that Yatsek had gone. And next would come war; perhaps she would never behold him in life again; perhaps he would fall and die with the conviction that a perverse and wicked heart was in her bosom. All at once boundless sorrow seized her. Yatsek stood before her eyes as if living, with his embrowned face and those pensive eyes which more than once she had laughed at, as being the eyes of a maiden.
The girl's thought flies like a swift swallow after the traveller, and calls to him: "Yatsek! I wish thee no evil! God sees my heart, Yatsek." Thus does she call to him, but he makes no answer; he rides on straight ahead. What does he think of her? He only frowns and spits from disgust as he travels.
Again there are pearls on her eyelids. A certain weakness has come on her, a moment of resignation in which she says to herself: "Ah, this is difficult! May God forgive him, and go with him, and never mind me!"
But her lips quiver like those of a child, her eyes look like those of a tortured bird, and somewhere off in a hidden corner of her soul, which is as pure as a tear, she blames God in the deepest secret for that which has met her.
Then again she felt certain that Yatsek had never loved her, and she could not understand why he had not loved her, even a little.
Immediately she recalled those words of Yatsek, which were fixed in her memory as in marble. "Not thou art to go, I am the person to go; but I say to thee: though for years I have loved thee more than health, more than life, more than my own soul, I will never come back to thee. I will gnaw my own hands off in torture, but, so help me, God, I will never come back to thee." And he was pale as a wall when he said this, and almost mad from pain and from anger. He had not come back, that was true! He had appeared no more, he had left her, he had renounced her, he had abandoned her, he had wronged her; with an unworthy suspicion he and the priest had composed the dreadful letter--all that was true, and her guardian was right in that. But that Yatsek had never loved her, that after he had found money he had departed with a light and joyful heart, that he thought of paying court to others, that he had ceased altogether to think of her,--this was incredible. Her guardian might think so in his carefulness, but the truth was quite different. He who has no love does not grow pale, does not set his teeth, does not gnaw his fists, does not rend his soul in anguish. Such being the case, the young lady thought the difference was only this, that instead of one two were now suffering, hence a certain consolation, and even a certain hope, entered her. The days and months which were to come seemed gloomier, it may be, but not so bitter. The words of the letter ceased to burn her like red-hot iron, for though she doubted not that Yatsek had assisted in the writing, it is one thing to act through sorrow and pain, and another through deliberate malice.