He stepped nearer cautiously, but the house was quite silent. The clear song of the nightingales rose powerfully and distinctly on the air, and as they died away one heard the chirping and rustling of the grasshoppers, and the marshbird clapping his slippery beak in the water.
Levko felt enraptured with the sweetness and stillness of the night. He struck the strings of his guitar and sang:
"Oh lovely moon Thou steepst in light The house where my darling Sleeps all night."
A window opened gently, and the same girl whose image he had seen in the pool looked out and listened attentively to the song. Her long-lashed eyelids were partly drooping over her eyes; she was as pale as the moonlight, but wonderfully beautiful. She smiled, and a shiver ran through Levko.
"Sing me a song, young Cossack!" she said gently, bending her head sideways and quite closing her eyes.
Tears rolled down her pale cheeks. "Cossack," she said, and there was something inexpressibly touching in her tone, "Cossack, find my stepmother for me. I will do everything for you; I will reward you; I will give you abundant riches. I have armlets embroidered with silk and coral necklaces; I will give you a girdle set with pearls. I have gold. Cossack, seek my stepmother for me. She is a terrible witch; she allowed me no peace in the beautiful world. She tortured me; she made me work like a common maid-servant. Look at my face; she has banished the redness from my cheeks with her unholy magic. Look at my white neck; they cannot be washed away, they cannot be washed away--the blue marks of her iron claws. Look at my white feet; they did not walk on carpets, but on hot sand, on damp ground, on piercing thorns. And my eyes--look at them; they are almost blind with weeping. Seek my stepmother!"
Her voice, which had gradually become louder, stopped, and she wept.
The Cossack felt overpowered by sympathy and grief. "I am ready to do everything to please you, dear lady," he cried with deep emotion; "but where and how can I find her?"
"Look, look!" she said quickly, "she is here! She dances on the lake-shore with my maidens, and warms herself in the moonlight. Yet she is cunning and sly. She has assumed the shape of one who is drowned, yet I know and hear that she is present. I am so afraid of her. Because of her I cannot swim free and light as a fish. I sink and fall to the bottom like a piece of iron. Look for her, Cossack!"