At the sight of him the maid stood still; at first her countenance flushed as if a live flame passed through it; after which she grew so pale that the dark down above her lips became more marked, and she stood motionless, with downcast eyes and heaving breast, bewildered and abashed. But he spoke out with perfect freedom: "Good-day! good-day! Ah, what is your name?" "Pauline," she murmured, not raising her eyes. "A beautiful name." After which, he smiled somewhat roguishly and added: "But Panna Pauly--the next time--there is a bolt." "I will drown myself," cried the maid in a hysterical voice. And he began to speak in persuasive tones: "Why? For what? Why, no one is to blame,--that was a pure accident. I will not tell anybody about it and that I had seen such beauty; that was only my luck." And he proceeded to the fishing place. She followed his shapely form with her tear-dimmed eyes and stood on the spot for quite a while in reverie, for it seemed to her that by reason of the secret known to them alone something had transpired between them which would unite them forever. And afterwards when she recollected how that charming young heir of Jastrzeb had seen her, she shuddered from head to foot. X Gronski was a man of gentle and kindly disposition. Notwithstanding his penchant for philosophical pessimism, he was not a pessimist in his relations to men and life. Speaking in other words, in theory he often thought like Ecclesiastes; in practice he preferred to tread in the footsteps of Horace, or rather as Horace would have trodden had he been a Christian. Continual communing with the ancient world gave him a certain serenity, not divested indeed of melancholy, but peaceful and harmonious. Owing to his high education and extensive reading, which enabled him to come in contact with all ideas which found lodgment in the human mind and familiarize himself with all forms of human life, he was exceedingly tolerant, and the most extreme views did not lead him into that condition which would cause him to screech like a frightened peacock. This deep forbearance and this conviction that all that is taking place has to occur, did not deprive him of energy of thoughts or words; it deprived him, however, in some measure of the ability to act. He was more of a spectator than an actor on the world's stage, but a well-disposed spectator, acutely susceptible and extraordinarily curious. He sometimes compared himself to a man sitting on the bank of a river and watching its course, who knows indeed that it must roll on and disappear in the sea, but who is nevertheless interested in the movements of its waves, its currents, its whirlpools, mists rising from its depths, and the play of light upon its waters. Besides his genuine love of ancient languages and authors, Gronski was interested in politics, science, literature, art, the contemporary social tendencies,