Pan Gideon had not invented when he spoke of the "abhorrence" which at his house both women felt for the conqueror. Yatsek convinced himself of this from one glance at them. Pani Vinnitski met him with an offended face, and snatched her hand away when he wished to kiss it in greeting; and the young lady, without compassion for his suffering and embarrassment, did not answer his greeting. She was occupied with Stanislav, sparing neither tender looks nor anxious questions; she pushed her care so far that when he rose from the armchair in the dining-room to go to the chamber set apart for the wounded she supported him by the arm, and though he opposed and excused himself she conducted him to the threshold. "For thee there is nothing in this house. All is lost!" cried despair and also jealousy in Yatsek's heart at sight of this action. Toward him that maiden had shown changing humors, and with one kindly word had given usually ten that were cold, when not biting, hence his pain was the keener, that till then he had not supposed that she could be kind, sweet, and angel-like to a man whom she loved really. That Panna Anulka loved Stanislav the ill-fated Yatsek had no doubt whatever. He would have endured not only such a wound as that given Stanislav, but would have shed all his blood with delight, if she would speak even once in her life to him with such a voice, and look with such eyes at him as she had looked then at Stanislav. Hence, besides pain, an immeasurable sorrow now seized him. This sent a torrent of tears toward his eyeballs, and if those tears did not gush out and flow down his cheeks, they flooded his heart and pervaded his being. Thus did Yatsek feel his whole breast fill with tears, and, to give the last blow at this juncture, never had Panna Anulka seemed to him so beautiful beyond measure as at that moment, with her pale face and her crown of golden hair slightly dishevelled from emotion. "She is an angel, but not for thee," complained the sorrow within him; "wonderful, but another will take her!" And he would have fallen at her feet and confessed all his suffering and devotion, but at the same time he felt that just after that which had happened it would not be proper to do so, and that if he did not control himself and stifle the struggle in his spirit he would tell her something quite different from that which he wanted, and sink himself utterly in her estimation. Meanwhile Pani Vinnitski, as an elderly person and one skilled in medicine, entered the chamber with Stanislav, while the young lady turned back from the threshold. Yatsek, understanding that he must use the opportunity approached her. "I should like a word with you," said he, struggling to control himself, and with a trembling voice which, as it were, belonged to another. She looked at him with cold astonishment. "What do you wish?" Yatsek's face was lighted with a smile of such pain that it was almost like that of a martyr.