Yatsek was lying face upward on bundles of hay arranged lengthwise in one side of the wagon, while she sat on the other, bending every little while toward his wounded shoulder, and watching to see if blood might not come through the bandages. At times she put a leather bottle of old wine to the mouth of the wounded man. This wine acted well to all seeming, for after a while he was wearied of lying, and had the driver draw out the bundle on which his feet were then resting. "I prefer to ride sitting," said he, "since I feel all my strength now." "But the wound, will that not pain you more if you are sitting?" Yatsek turned his eyes to her rosy face, and said in a sad and low voice, "I will give the same answer as that knight long ago when King Lokietek saw him pierced with spears by the Knights of the Cross, on a battlefield. 'Is thy pain great?' asked the king. The knight showed his wounds then. 'These pain least of all,' said he in answer." Panna Sieninski dropped her eyes. "But what pains you more?" inquired she in a whisper. "A yearning heart, and separation, and the memory of wrongs inflicted." For a while silence continued, but the hearts began to throb in both with power which increased every moment, for they knew that the time had come then in which they could and should confess everything which each had against the other. "It is true," said she, "I did you an injustice, when, after the duel, I received you with angry face, and inhumanly. But that was the only time, and, though God alone knows how much I regretted that afterward, still I say it is my fault! and from my whole soul I implore you." Yatsek put his sound hand to his forehead. "Not that," answered he, "was the thorn, not that the great anguish!" "I know it was not that, but the letter from Pan Gideon. How could you suspect me of knowing the contents of the letter, or having suggested them?" And she began to tell, with a broken voice, how it happened: how she had implored Pan Gideon to make a step toward being reconciled: how he had promised to write a heartfelt and fatherly letter, but he wrote entirely the opposite. Of this she learned only later from Father Voynovski, and from this it was shown that Pan Gideon having other plans, simply wanted to separate them from each other forever. At the same time, since her words were a confession, and also a renewal of painful and bitter memories, her eyes were dimmed with tears, and from constraint and shame a deep blush came out on her cheeks from one instant to another. "Did Father Voynovski," asked she at last, "not write to you that I knew nothing, and that I could not even understand why I received for my sincere feelings a recompense of that kind?" "Father Voynovski," answered Yatsek, "only wrote me that you were going to marry Pan Gideon."