Pani Krzycki gazed with astonishment at Swidwicki and broke off the conversation. Becoming acquainted with him only that evening and having no idea that he was a man who, for a quip, for a wretched play on words and from habit, was ready always and everywhere to talk stuff and nonsense in the most reckless manner, she could not understand why he said that to her. Nevertheless his words were for her, as it were, a ray illuminating things which heretofore she had not observed. She found new proofs that her heartfelt and secret wishes would always remain a dream without substance--and she sighed for the third time. "Ah, then it is so," she thought to herself in her soul. "Yes, yes," Swidwicki continued. "My cousin is very Platonic and in addition a trifle anæmic." In his laughter there was a kind of bitterness and even malice, so that Pani Krzycki again looked at him with astonishment. In the meantime Marynia led Miss Anney to another chamber. Her ears each moment became redder and her eyes sparkled with a perfectly childish curiosity. So pressing her little nose to Miss Anney's cheek, she began to whisper: "Tell me! Did he propose to you at the piano? Did he propose? Tell me now." And Miss Anney, embraced her neck with her arms and kissing her cordially, whispered in her ear: "Almost." "What?--at the piano! I guessed it at once! Ho, ho! I am thoroughly conversant with such matters. But how was that? Almost? How, almost?" "For I know that he loves me--" "Laudie? What did he say to you?" "He did not even have to say it." "I understand, I understand perfectly." Miss Anney, though her eyes were moist, began to laugh, and, hugging the little violinist again, said: "Let us now return to the salon." "Let us return," answered Marynia. On the way she said with delighted countenance: "You and Zosia, thought that I saw nothing, and I--oho!" In the salon they chanced upon a political discussion. The tall elderly gentleman with the white mane, who was a colleague and friend of the late Otocki and at the same time editor of one of the principal dailies in Warsaw, said: "They think that this is a new state of affairs, which henceforth is bound to continue, but it is an attack of hysteria, after which exhaustion and prostration will follow. I have lived long in the world and often have witnessed similar phenomena. Yes, it is so. It is a stupid and wicked revolution." If Swidwicki had heard from some madman that this was a wise and salutary revolution, he undoubtedly would have been of the opinion of the old editor, but, as he esteemed lightly journalists in general, he was particularly angered at the thought that the amiable old gentleman passed in certain circles as a political authority; so he began at once to dispute.