There was, however, in the Jastrzeb manor-house another who did not sleep and who talked with a person not present, and that was Laskowicz. After all that had taken place and what had been revealed in the past few days, he was prepared for his farewell parting with the Krzycki family, as he well knew that his further presence in Jastrzeb would be intolerable. And nevertheless he desired at present to stay in it, even though for a few days, in order that he might gaze longer upon Panna Marynia and, as he called it, "further narcotize himself." Somehow, from the first moment he had heard her play, she actually absorbed his thoughts in a way that no woman up to that time had done. Foremost among the prepared formulæ which he, with dogmatic faith, had adopted to judge mankind with, was the precept that a woman belonging to the so-called pampered class was a thoughtless creature. In the meantime he had to dissent at once from that formula as a soul had spoken to him through the violin. Later he was astonished to find in that young lady two entities, one of which manifested itself in music as a finished artist, concentrated, filled with exaltation within herself, dissolved in the waves of tones and playing as if she drew the bow over her own nerves; the other appeared in every-day life in her customary relations with people. The latter seemed at the first glance of the eye, if not an insignificant, a common girl, full of simplicity and even gaiety, who screamed like a cat when Dolhanski, for instance, said things disagreeable to her; who jested with Gronski, telling him absurdities about spirits or, to the great alarm of Gronski and her older sister, fled into the garden for a boat ride on the pond. Laskowicz did not fully comprehend the world and was not a subtle person; nevertheless, he observed in the "common girl" something which made her, as it were, a little divinity, haloed with a quiet worship. Evidently she herself did not appear to be conscious of this and, viewing such a state of affairs as something which was self-understood, she lived the life of a flower or a bird. Confident that she will not suffer any harm from any one, gentle, bright, living beyond the misery and wretchedness of life, beyond its cares, beyond its chilling winds which dim the eyes with tears, beyond the dust which defiles, she resembled a pure spring which people look upon as blessed and whose translucency they fear to muddy. It seemed that the environment did not exact of her anything more than that she should exist, just as nothing more is demanded of a masterpiece.