Tea was waiting already in another room. While they were drinking it, Plavitski described his visit at the Yamishes. The young people were silent; but from time to time they looked at each other with eyes full of light, and at parting they pressed each other's hands very warmly. Marynia felt a certain heaviness seizing her, as if that day had wearied her; but it was a wonderful and pleasant kind of weariness. Afterward, when her head was resting on the pillow, she did not think that the day following would be Monday, that a new week of common toil would begin; she thought only of Pan Stanislav, and his words were sounding in her ears: "Who will know me, if not a woman, if she is only wonderfully good and wonderfully reliable, greatly mine and greatly beloved?" Pan Stanislav, on his part, was saying to himself, while lighting a cigarette in bed, "She is kind and shapely, charming; where is there such another?" FOOTNOTES: [1] Third, or ring finger. [2] Kremen means flint in Polish. CHAPTER III. But the following day was a gray one, and Panna Plavitski woke with reproaches. It seemed to her that, the day before, she had let herself be borne away on some current farther than was proper, and that she had been simply coquetting with Pan Stanislav. She was penetrated with special dissatisfaction, for this reason principally: that Pan Stanislav had only come as a creditor. She had forgotten that yesterday; but to-day she said to herself, "Undoubtedly it will come to his head that I wanted to win him, or to soften him;" and at this thought the blood flowed to her cheeks and her forehead. She had an honest nature and much ambition, which revolted at every idea that she might be suspected of calculation. Believing now in the possibility of such a suspicion, she felt in advance as if offended by Pan Stanislav. Withal, there was one thought which was bitter beyond every expression: she knew that, as a rule, a copper could not overtake a copper in the treasury of Kremen; that there was no money; and that if, in view of the proposed parcelling of Magyerovka, there were hopes of having some in future, her father would make evasions, for he considered other debts more urgent than Pan Stanislav's. She promised herself, it is true, to do all in her power to see him paid absolutely, and before others; but she knew that she was not able to effect much. Her father assisted her willingly in management; but in money matters he had his own way; and it was rarely that he regarded her opinion. His rôle consisted really in evading everything by all means,--by promises never kept, by delays, by presenting imaginary calculations and hopes, instead of reality. As the collection of debts secured by mortgage on land is difficult and tedious, and defence may be kept up almost as long as one wishes, Plavitski held on to Kremen, thanks to his system. In the end, all this threatened ruin inexorable, as well