Her eyes were so dim, she noted no one around her, not even Pete, who had been at her heels ever since she came home, eager to help, following her everywhere with his eyes, and often approaching so close that she unconsciously moved aside. And at last, when they were both in the granary heaping cut straw into a basket, he caught her by the waist, pushed her close against a partition wall, and sought her lips with a muttered ejaculation. Engrossed as she was, and unsuspicious of anything more than the rough horse-play of a farm-hand, perhaps rather pleased, too, at finding herself not so absolutely neglected, she suddenly saw his intent when he threw her down on the straw, and pressed his moist hot lips to hers. With the fury of a whirlwind she started up, and cast him from her like a truss of hay; and he measured his length on the threshing-floor! “You foul eyesore!” she gasped, catching hold of a rake. “You plague-spotted beast! you swineherd, you! Only dare to lay a finger on me again, and I’ll break every bone in your body! I’ll teach you to make love, and a bloody lesson it will be!” In a few minutes, however, she thought no more of him, got all her work done, and went into the cabin. On the threshold she met Hanka. Out of eyes glazed over with weeping and sorrow, the two exchanged glances—and then passed each other by in a moment. But the doors of both rooms stood open, and the lamps had been lit, so that they happened every now and then to look at each other. Later, too, when getting supper ready together, they came closer perforce; though neither breathed a single word. Each well knew what the other had to endure, and they often flung mutual glances of deep rancour, and their dumb set mouths said with silent malice: “It serves you right—right—right!” Yet at certain other instants they felt a sort of compassion one for the other, and might have conversed kindly if either of the two had chosen to begin. They even lingered near each other with side-glances of expectation: their hates seemed lulled, and their common hard fate and loneliness were drawing them nearer. But it went no further. Something held them back—now a wail from the little one, now a sense of abasement, now the sharp memory of wrong suffered. And after a time they fell apart again, their resentment awake once more, and their souls sweltering spite afresh. “It serves you right!—right!—right!” each of them hissed in thought, with flaming eyes, ready for a quarrel, aye, and even for a fight, whereby they might discharge their mutual detestation. Luckily, it did not go so far; for Yagna went out to her mother’s directly after supper.