Hanka is that same light-haired lady, charming as a dream, alluring, genteel, womanly, responding in sentiment to every thought and every word; the feeling of disenchantment was more powerful than those thoughts, and that charm of exoticism, which suddenly was lacking in the girl, minimized her worth in his eyes. But, besides this, there was something else, in view of which the disenchantment and all unexpected impressions stood aside and became matters of secondary importance. This was, that he had once possessed that girl--body and soul. She was at that time almost a child--a flower not yet in full bloom which he plucked and carried for some time at his bosom. The memory of that could be a reproach only for him; no fault whatever weighed on her. He recollected those moonlight nights on which he stole to the mill; those whispers which were one quiet song of love and intoxication, interrupted only by kisses; he recalled how he clasped to his heart her girlish body, fragrant with the hay of the fields; how he drank the tears from her eyes and how he said to her that he would give up for her all the ladies of all the courts. The idyl passed, but now there wafted upon him from her the breath of the first youthful years, the first love, the first ecstasy, and the truly great poetry of life. Besides, there was truth in what he had confided to Gronski in Jastrzeb: that the girl loved him as no other woman in the world surely would love him. And at the thought of this, his heart began to melt. Together with the wave of recollection, Hanka returned and again engaged his thoughts. Yes. But that was Hanka and she is Miss Anney. In Ladislaus, from the time he fell in love with her, his senses leaped wildly towards her like a pack of yelping hounds; but he held them in leash because at the same time he knelt before his beloved. She was to him an object of desire but at the same time a sacred relic; something so inaccessible, exalted, pure, and mysterious in its virginity that at the thought that the moment would arrive when he would be the master of those treasures and secrets appeared to him a delight beyond all measure of delight; all the more fathomless as it was, united, as it were, with a sacrilege. And now he had to say to himself that this sacrilege he had already committed; that the charm of something unknown was dispelled; that in this vestal there were for him no mysteries and that he had already drunk from that cup. And this again was one lure less; one disenchantment more. In this manner Miss Anney muddied his recollection of the field peasant-girl, Hanka,--Hanka depreciated the charm of Miss Anney. Both were so different, so unlike each other, that, being unable to merge them into one entity, he vainly intensified that jarring impression with a feeling of disquietude and pain.