her footprints on the sandy
bank where she used to angle for gudgeon, filled me with delight
and a passionate hunger for life. I judged of her spiritual being
from her lovely face and lovely figure, and every word, every smile
of Ariadne's bewitched me, conquered me and forced me to believe
in the loftiness of her soul. She was friendly, ready to talk, gay
and simple in her manners. She had a poetic belief in God, made
poetic reflections about death, and there was such a wealth of
varying shades in her spiritual organisation that even her faults
seemed in her to carry with them peculiar, charming qualities.
Suppose she wanted a new horse and had no money--what did that
matter? Something might be sold or pawned, or if the steward swore
that nothing could possibly be sold or pawned, the iron roofs might
be torn off the lodges and taken to the factory, or at the very
busiest time the farm-horses might be driven to the market and sold
there for next to nothing. These unbridled desires reduced the whole
household to despair at times, but she expressed them with such
refinement that everything was forgiven her; all things were permitted
her as to a goddess or to Caesar's wife. My love was pathetic and
was soon noticed by every one--my father, the neighbours, and the
peasants--and they all sympathised with me. When I stood the
workmen vodka, they would bow and say: "May the Kotlovitch young
lady be your bride, please God!"

And Ariadne herself knew that I loved her. She would often ride
over on horseback or drive in the char-a-banc to see us, and would
spend whole days with me and my father. She made great friends with
the old man, and he even taught her to bicycle, which was his
favourite amusement.

I remember helping her to get on the bicycle one evening, and she
looked so lovely that I felt as though I were burning my hands when
I touched her. I shuddered with rapture, and when the two of them,
my old father and she, both looking so handsome and elegant, bicycled
side by side along the main road, a black horse ridden by the steward
dashed aside on meeting them, and it seemed to me that it dashed
aside because it too was overcome by her beauty. My love, my worship,
touched Ariadne and softened her; she had a passionate longing to
be captivated like me and to respond with the same love. It was so
poetical!

But she was incapable of really loving as I did, for she was cold
and already somewhat corrupted. There was a dem