Hania

CHAPTER XIX

THUNDER hurling Zeus; at what art thou gazing from the summit of Olympus? Things are done of which philosophers have never dreamed.

On the eve of my marriage Antek comes to me, nudges me with his elbow, and, turning aside his dishevelled head, says gloomily, —

"Vladek, dost thou know I have committed a crime?"

"Well, since thou hast mentioned it," I answer, "what sort of a crime?"

Antek looks at the floor fixedly, and says, as if to himself, —

"That such a drunkard as I, such an idiot without talent, such a moral and physical bankrupt should marry such a maiden as Kazia is an out-and-out crime."

I do not believe my ears; but I throw myself on my friend's neck without regard to the fact that he pushes me away.

His marriage will be in a couple of days.

CHAPTER XX

AFTER a residence of some months in Rome, Eva and I receive a splendid card inviting us to the wedding of Pan Ostrynski and Panna Helena Turno, primo voto, Kolchanovski.

We cannot go, for Eva's health does not permit.

Eva paints continually, and makes immense progress. I receive a gold medal in Pest. A certain rich Croat bought my picture. I have entered into relations with Goupil.

CHAPTER XXI

A SON is born to me in Verona.

Eva herself says that she has never seen such a child.

Uncommon.

CHAPTER XXII

FOR some months we are in Warsaw.

I have fitted up a splendid studio. We visit the Ostrynskis rather frequently. He has sold "The Kite," and is now "President of the Society for Distributing Barley Grits to Laborers out of Employment." Nothing can give an idea of his lordliness or the gratitude with which he is surrounded. He pats me on the shoulder and says to me: "Well, benefactor!" He patronizes literary talents also, and receives on Wednesdays.

She is as beautiful as a dream. They have no children.

CHAPTER XXIII

OH, save me or I die of laughter. Antek and his wife have come home from Paris. She poses as the wife of an artist of golden Bohemia; he wears silk shirts, has a forelock, and wears his beard wedge-form. I understand all; I understand that she could overcome his habits, his character; but how did she conquer his hair? – that remains for me an endless puzzle.

Antek has not stopped painting "corpses;" but he paints also genre pictures of village life. He has great success. He paints portraits too; these, however, with less result, for the carnation always recalls the "corpse."

I asked him, through old friendship, if he is happy with his wife. He told me that he had never dreamed of such happiness. I confess that Kazia has disappointed me in a favorable sense.

I too should be perfectly happy, were it not that Eva begins to be a little weak, and, besides, the poor thing becomes peevish. I heard her crying once in the night. I know what that means. She is pining for the theatre. She says nothing, but she pines.

I have begun a portrait of Pani Ostrynski. She is simply an incomparable woman! Regard for Ostrynski would not restrain me, of course, and were it not that to this hour I love Eva immensely, I know not —

But I love Eva immensely, immensely!

THE END