To Krzycki, it frequently occurred that certainly this "good diviner" did all that through kindness and sincere friendship, but also because she wanted to conciliate his mother. And his heart trembled with joy at the thought that the moment would arrive when the wishes of his mother would coincide with that for which he, himself, most strongly yearned. He feared that a premature avowal might sever the ties which were being formed and for that reason he checked the word, which often burned his lips like a flame. After all, there was an avowal in their silence and glances. Ladislaus did not dare and, until that time, did not wish to tell her plainly that he loved her; he wanted, however, with each word to clear the path and approach that eagerly desired moment. In the meantime it happened that, either from lack of breath he could not speak at all, or else he said something entirely different from what he intended to say. Once when they rode amidst luxuriant winter corn and when a light breeze bent towards them the rye stalks, together with the red poppy and the gray fescue-grass, he decided to tell her that all Jastrzeb bowed at her feet; and he said, with a great beating of his heart, in a hollow voice not his own, "that in places the grain is lying down." After which, in his soul, he called himself an idiot and fretted at the supposition that a similar opinion of him must have crossed her mind. It seemed to him that she, beyond comparison, exercised a better self-control and that she could always say just what she wished to say. Consequently, even at times when partly through coquetry and partly because of her habit of repeating his expressions like an echo, she answered, for instance, "that in places the grain is lying down," he discerned in her words an unheard-of significance and later pondered over them for hours. But he also had, particularly in the morning, moments of greater tranquillity of mind and greater peace, in which his words were not like a disarrayed rank of soldiers, each one marching in a different direction. At times, the themes for these quieter conversations were furnished by some external objects, but oftener by anxiety occasioned by the impending separation. Krzycki at such times hid behind his mother and in her name expressed that which he did not dare to say in his own. "I can imagine," he said the day following the second visit of the doctor, "how Mother will long for you." And the maiden, to whom it evidently occurred that not only the mother but the son would long for her, looked at him a little teasingly, with the hazy light of her strange eyes, and replied: "I am such a bird of flight that your mother will soon become disaccustomed to me." "Oh, I warrant you that she will not," exclaimed Ladislaus. After which, he added: "I know Mother; she has fallen in love with you immensely." "Why, hardly ten days have elapsed since we arrived. Is it possible to fall in love so soon?"