Subsequently that girl was erased from his memory so completely that even the light pangs of conscience which he felt on her account vanished; nothing remained. It was well with him in the world and he sought new sensations, while she was seized by the whirlwind of life and was hurled like a wretched leaf upon a foreign land, where she suffered from sheer starvation. Nevertheless, neither at that time, nor later, when good people took care of her, did she forget him nor did she cease to long for him. Ladislaus was not a deep connoisseur of the human soul; he felt, nevertheless, that what for him was simply a love adventure, a shallow enjoyment of the senses, a transient impression which disperses to the winds like the fragrance of flowers, for her became a new life; a surrender of her whole being and whole soul, too pure and too noble for her to seek a new happiness upon new paths. And now he understood why that coveted Miss Anney of to-day, charming as a dream, brilliant, surrounded by affluence and arousing admiration, wrote to him that she had a heart not of foreign books but of a Polish village--simple and faithful. He understood also why the letter was signed "Hanka." Suddenly and irrevocably were banished all his suspicions, and her words, "my life from the moment of the departure from Rzeslewo has been pure," touched him to the extent that he began to upbraid himself that he should for a moment have thought that it could have been otherwise. At once he seemed to himself to be little, mean, and unworthy of that noble and exalted soul. But through his heart and head there coursed during the last moments so many thoughts, impressions, and feelings that he was uncertain whether the final sensibility of his own shortcomings and wretchedness would be lasting. Nevertheless, he was seized with an ever-increasing tenderness, and more and more became obliterated that difference between Hanka and Miss Anney which was so irritating to him in the first moments. Now, on the contrary, the recollection that this simple girl of old and that fascinating lady of to-day were one and the same woman penetrated him with a kind of thrill, resembling a thrill of joy. The memory that at one time he possessed the other began to waken in him, as it were, a hunger and a new passion for the present one, and the thought of her charms intensified the play of his young blood. But he strove to stifle within him those impressions with the consciousness of the responsibilities which were imposed upon him. Above all things he propounded to himself the question. What should a man of honor do who had betrayed and therefore wronged a girl, almost a child, who was in love with him, and later, after a few years, met her under a changed name and fell in love with her? There was only one answer; even if he did not fall in love, if her love continued, he ought to assume all the consequences of his acts. If she remained a simple-minded rustic who