She frowned a little, and, looking at me from under her forehead, went on some time in silence. I endeavored to hide the glad emotion with which her words penetrated me. "She says," thought I, "that if I love another, it is I who have changed; therefore it is not she who has changed, she--" And from delight I dared not finish this wise inference. Notwithstanding all this, it was not I, not I, but she who had changed. That little maiden who six months before knew nothing of God's world, to whose mind it had never occurred to mention feelings, and for whom such a conversation would have been as Chinese, carried it on to-day as freely and accurately as if she had been reciting a lesson. How had that child mind developed and become so flexible? But wonderful things take place in girls. More than one falls asleep in the evening a child and wakes up in the morning a woman, with another world of feelings and thoughts. For Hania, with a nature quick, capable, sensitive, the passage of her sixteenth year, another sphere of society, learning, books, read, perhaps, in secret,--all this was more than sufficient. Meanwhile we walked on side by side in silence which Hania was the first to break. "Then you are in love, Pan Henryk?" "Perhaps," answered I, with a smile. "Then you will be sighing for Warsaw?" "No, Hania; I should be glad were I never to leave here." Hania glanced at me quickly. Evidently she wished to say something, but was silent. After a while, however, she struck her skirts lightly with the parasol, and said, as if answering her own thoughts,-- "Ah, what a child I am!" "Why dost thou say that, Hania?" "Oh, so-- Let us sit on this bench and talk of something else. Is not the view from here beautiful?" asked she, with that well-known smile on her lips. She seated herself on the bench not far from the paling under an immense linden-tree. From that point the view was very beautiful indeed in the direction of the pond, the dam, and the forest beyond the pond. Hania pointed it out to me with her parasol; but I, though a lover of beautiful views, had not the least desire to look at it,--first, because I knew it perfectly; second, I had before me Hania, a hundred times more beautiful than anything which surrounded her; finally, I was thinking of something else. "How clearly those trees are reflected in the water!" said she. "I see that thou art an artist," I answered, not looking at the trees or the water. "Father Ludvik is teaching me to sketch. Oh, I have learned much while you were gone. I wanted--but what is the matter? Are you angry with me?" "No, Hania, I am not angry, for I could not be angry with thee; but I see that thou avoidest my questions, and this is the trouble, we are both playing at hide and seek, instead of speaking sincerely and with confidence, as in old times. Maybe thou dost not feel this, but for me it is disagreeable."