And her voice changed into a shrill nervous hiccough. Laskowicz was frightened at her transports, but at the same time breathed easily. Howsoever he might long since have conjectured that Krzycki's affections were directed towards Miss Anney and not towards Marynia, he was nevertheless pleased in his soul that reality corroborated those conjectures. Living, however, in a world which no echoes of the higher social sphere reach, and knowing nothing of the transformation of Miss Anney into a Polish peasant woman, he began to interrogate Pauly minutely because the affair aroused his curiosity; he wished also to give time to the excited girl to calm herself. But this last was not an easy matter, and he long had to put questions to her to elicit the news which Swidwicki had first told her that Miss Anney was a simple peasant woman, but which, however, she did not at first believe, as he said it while under the influence of intoxicants. Only from the conversations which she overheard did she become convinced not only of the truth of the statement but also that Krzycki was to wed Miss Anney. Afterwards she peeped through the keyhole and saw him kneel before her and kiss her hands. Then she could not restrain herself any longer and at the first opportunity flung at the feet of her mistress her "linen frock," and, reviling her as a base peasant, left her service. Here again indignation began to seize her so that Laskowicz from fear that she might have an attack of convulsions, said: "We will consult together about this, but only let the lady be pacified." But she replied with increasing irritation: "I did not come here for you to pacify me. You, sir, have prated about our mutual wrongs and now you order me to be pacified. I want help and not your chatter." "You are anxious that he should not marry her?" "And what else do you suppose?" In any case Laskowicz would have sided with the girl for he was obligated to do that by gratitude to her for saving his life, by the similarity of their lot, and those "joint wrongs" of which he himself had previously spoken to Pauly, and of which she now reminded him. But the existence of Krzycki at present ceased to stand in his way and Miss Anney's existence less so. Only one thing he could not forgive in her: "She was a peasant woman, she was a wage-earner, and afterwards became a female bourgeois. In this is the crime." "In it or not in it, it is now I or she! Do you understand, sir?" "I understand, but what is to be done?" "When you ran away from the police, I did not ask what was to be done." "I remember." "And you said at Swidwicki's that your people could accomplish everything." "For it is so." "So if he only does not marry her, then even let the world end." Laskowicz began to look at her with his closely set eyes and after a moment commenced to speak slowly and with emphasis: