The girl gazed at him helplessly, passing her hand across her forehead once, twice; and then she groaned, "It is beyond me--do you despise me?--turn me from you?"
"No!" he cried; "but I will not drag you down to misery and disgrace. If you stayed here, Anusia, you could only be a servant-girl in the village where I work. We should suffer--but that is nothing! Marry one another we cannot; not while your father lives, for the Church requires his consent. You could only be my--my----. Anusia, I dare not!"
Whereupon she drew herself tip proudly, looking him full in the face. "I am a girl of unblemished name," she said. "If I am satisfied to be near you----"
"You! you!" he gasped, "what do you know about it? You are an honest girl! But I--good God, my mother----. Go! go!" And there was a cry of despair; then he recovered himself "God help me, Anusia, it must be. The woman that will take care of you now lives next door to the church, the old sexton's widow, Anna Paulicz--this way!"
The girl probably but half understood him. As in a dream she moved toward her horse, seized the bridle, and turned back to Taras mechanically.
She stood before him. Her face was white as death; she opened her colourless lips once, twice, as though to speak, but sound there was none. At last, with an effort, a hoarse whisper broke from her, "I hate you!"
"Anusia!" he cried, staggering. But answer there was none--the thundering footfall of a horse only dying away in the night.
Harvest had come and the harvest-home. The Jewish fiddlers played their merry tunes in the courtyard of the castle at Hankowce, and far into the evening continued the dancing and jumping and huzzaing of the reapers. The baron and his coachman were perhaps the only two of all the village who took no pleasure in the revelry--the one because he had to provide the schnaps and mead that were being consumed, the other because his heart was nowise attuned to it.
Dreary weeks had passed since that impassioned meeting on the heath, but the girl's parting words kept ringing in poor Taras's ear. "It is all at an end," he said, "and no use in worrying." But he kept worrying, and that she should hate him was an undying grief to his heart. It was little comfort that he could say to himself, "You have done well, Taras; it is better to be unhappy than to be a villain."