accessible to other sentiments. The need of love burned ardently within
him. When he had passed his eighteenth year, woman began to present
herself more frequently in his dreams; listening to philosophical
discussions, he still beheld her, fresh, black-eyed, tender; before him
constantly flitted her elastic bosom, her soft, bare arms; the very gown
which clung about her youthful yet well-rounded limbs breathed into his
visions a certain inexpressible sensuousness. He carefully concealed
this impulse of his passionate young soul from his comrades, because in
that age it was held shameful and dishonourable for a Cossack to think
of love and a wife before he had tasted battle. On the whole, during the
last year, he had acted more rarely as leader to the bands of students,
but had roamed more frequently alone, in remote corners of Kief, among
low-roofed houses, buried in cherry orchards, peeping alluringly at the
street. Sometimes he betook himself to the more aristocratic streets,
in the old Kief of to-day, where dwelt Little Russian and Polish nobles,
and where houses were built in more fanciful style. Once, as he was
gaping along, an old-fashioned carriage belonging to some Polish noble
almost drove over him; and the heavily moustached coachman, who sat on
the box, gave him a smart cut with his whip. The young student fired up;
with thoughtless daring he seized the hind-wheel with his powerful hands
and stopped the carriage. But the coachman, fearing a drubbing, lashed
his horses; they sprang forward, and Andrii, succeeding happily in
freeing his hands, was flung full length on the ground with his face
flat in the mud. The most ringing and harmonious of laughs resounded
above him. He raised his eyes and saw, standing at a window, a beauty
such as he had never beheld in all his life, black-eyed, and with
skin white as snow illumined by the dawning flush of the sun. She was
laughing heartily, and her laugh enhanced her dazzling loveliness. Taken
aback he gazed at her in confusion, abstractedly wiping the mud from
his face, by which means it became still further smeared. Who could
this beauty be? He sought to find out from the servants, who, in
rich liveries, stood at the gate in a crowd surrounding a young
guitar-player; but they only laughed when they saw his besmeared face
and deigned him no reply. At length he learned that she was the daughter
of the Waiwode of Koven, who had come thither for a time. The following
night,