What though the very air told of the feast-day, and folk swarmed to and fro, and the village resounded with shouts of laughter, and echoed to the songs of women seen far away, crimson against the grey sown fields? She laboured none the less under a deep oppression, an unbearable sadness of craving, which she had been suffering ever since the morning. To drive it off, she had gone round to her acquaintances, taken long walks along the roads and meadows, even changed her clothes twice or thrice: all would not do. Still, and yet more intensely, did she pine to go somewhere, do something, seek … she knew not what!
And now she wandered out upon the poplar road, gazing at the huge red disk, slowly descending and throwing streaks of light and shadow athwart the highway.
The cool of twilight soon began to envelop her, though the still warm breath of the plain filled her with a thrilling rhythmical sense of pleasure. The noises of the village came faintly to her ears, and the fiddle, wailing mournfully, smote upon her heartstrings.
On she went: whither and urged by what, she could not say.
She sometimes moaned heavily, sometimes motioned with her hands as she roved, sometimes stopped short, helpless, darting fiery glances round her. And then she walked on farther, weaving thoughts as subtle and impalpable as gossamer, or those threads of light upon the water which disappear at the touch of the hand. She looked sunwards, and saw—nothing: the rows of poplars before her seemed blurred, and as if seen in memory only. But she was mightily conscious of her own Self, and of something possessing that Self, making it smart and cry out and shed tears; of something that was carrying her away, making her wish she could take the wings of the birds she saw flying westward, and sail with them whithersoever they went. She felt in the grip of a Power instinct with burning tenderness, that forced tears from her as well as flames. … And on her way she plucked at the poplar-shoots, to cool her parched lips and her eyes that shot fire!
Now and again she would sink down beneath some tree, rest her chin upon her hands, and fall into a daydream. …
All this was the spring, singing, as it were, its glowing hymn within her, pervading all her being, working in it as it does in the fruitful fields, in the trees swelling with young sap that burst into a song of life as soon as the sunbeams warm them.
She tottered along, her eyes tingling, her fainting limbs barely able to support her any more. And a new desire came over her: to weep aloud, to dance, to roll amongst those soft fleeces of growing corn, cool with pearly dews; and then again she craved to leap in among the brambles, dash through the thorny copses, and feel the sweet wild tearing pain of wrestling and of strife!
Suddenly she turned back, and, hearing the sound of a violin, went in that direction. Ha! how everything was seething wildly within her, and brimming over with such abnormal excitement that she had a mind to leap about, to revel in some close-crowded tavern, even to drink herself to death—what did she care?
Upon the way from the churchyard to the poplar road, now quite drowned in the ruddy rays of sundown, someone was coming along, book in hand, and had stopped beneath a clump of silver birches.
It was Yanek, the organist’s son.
She tried to get a glimpse at him through the trees, but he caught sight of her.
She was minded to run, but her feet seemed rooted to the ground, and her eyes were fixed on him as one fascinated. He came forward smiling, and showing white teeth between rosy lips: a tall stripling, slender, and of milk-white complexion.
“Did ye not know me, Yagna?”
His voice struck a chord that resounded somewhere within her.
“How could I fail to? … But yet ye are somehow different, Yanek, not quite the same.”
“Why, of course, as we grow, we surely must change.—Have you been to see someone at Budy?”
“Nay, only wandering about: ye know, Eastertide does not end till tomorrow.”—Touching his book with her hand, “Religious, is it?” she asked him.
“Not in the least. ’Tis of far-off lands and the seas that surround them.”
“Heavens! of the seas? What, then are not the pictures ye have there images of the saints?”
“See!” He opened the book before her, showing the illustrations. With heads bent down, touching almost, they stood there, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, inadvertent. Now and then he explained some picture; and she was enraptured, raising her eyes to admire him, not daring to breathe for emotion. Now they pressed closer still, for the sun was under the forest, and it was hard to make out the pictures.
All of a sudden, a shudder went through him; he shrank back a little, murmuring: “Twilight has fallen; ’tis time to go home.”
“Let us go, then.”
So they went on in silence, and almost unseen in the shadows. Now the afterglow had faded, and dusk was trailing its bluish haze over all the fields. That day no gorgeous sunset blazed in the western sky, but through the tall poplars the daylight was seen to die away in a bright expanse of gold.
“Is it true, what they print there?” Yagna inquired of him, stopping awhile.
“ ’Tis true: every word true!”
“Lord! such vast waters, such wonderful countries! ’tis hard to believe it.”
“Nevertheless, ’tis the truth, Yagna,” he whispered, and looked kindly into her eyes, and so close that she held her breath, and a shiver passed through her frame. She bent forward with a gesture as of one who yields all, expecting him to embrace her, pressed to the hole of a tree hard by, and was opening her arms to him, when he suddenly started back, saying: “I must be off: it is late.
