Poor Lula interpreted differently from Malinka Yosef's absence. She judged that he had sacrificed himself for her,--that, not wishing to stand between her and Pelski, he had renounced her, and therefore he suffered so much and was sick. "Still, who told him that I should be happy with Pelski?" whispered she, quietly. "He did not trust me. My God, my God! but could he trust me?" Memory brought before her as a reproach those moments of gleaming looks, alluring smiles, and velvety words given to Pelski; she remembered also that blush of shame with which she was blazing when Pelski learned that Yosef was the son of a blacksmith. And now she hid her burning face in her hands, but that was shame of another kind. It seemed to her at that moment that if Yosef himself were a blacksmith she would kiss his blackened forehead with delight even; even with perfect happiness would she place her head on his valiant breast, though it were covered with the apron of a blacksmith. "How dark it is in my eyes! I did not know that I loved him," said she, trembling and aflame. Her bosom moved quickly! Again some thought the most tender decked out her forehead with the brightness of an angel; she threw herself on her knees before an image of the Virgin. "O mother of God!" cried she, aloud, "if any one has to suffer or to die, let me suffer, but preserve and love him, O Most Holy Mother!" Then she rose in calmness, and was so bright with the light of love that one might have said that a silver lamp was shining in that dark little chamber before the image of the Holy Virgin. During the two following days Augustinovich did not appear; but Pelski came, and according to Malinka's previsions, proposed to Lula. Seeing his cousin's face calm, and smiling with good hope, he expressed to her his hopes and wishes. The more painful was his astonishment when Lula gave him a decisively negative answer. "I love another," was the substance of her answer. Pelski wanted to learn who "that other" was. Lula told him without hesitation; then, as is done usually on such occasions, she offered him her friendship. But Pelski did not accept the hand extended to him at parting. "You have taken too much from me, you give me too little, cousin," whispered he, in a crushed voice. "For the happiness of a lifetime--friendship!!" But Lula felt no reproach after his departure. She was thinking of something else. This is the bad side of love, that it never thinks of anything but itself. It excludes particulars, but as a recompense includes the whole. Thou feelest that if the world were one man thou wouldst press him to thy bosom and kiss him on the head as a father. Something like that did Lula feel when she went to Malinka's chamber after Pelski's visit. She needed to confess to some one all that lay on her heart.