merry companions prolonged their orgies, the gayer he became. His gaiety waxed in proportion as his youthful followers slackened and grew weary.
If people from the villages in which he had been so dear, when he and Krista were still their young musicians, had seen him at such orgies, verily they would have shrugged their shoulders at him, and the mothers would have cried, “What a pity it is, poor boy, so young and bonny as he is, and once so good and honest.” Now people began to nickname him “Wild Venik”.
Then again it would happen that he had nothing to say to any one. He shunned the villages, or at most seated himself or laid him down somewhere behind the barn under the willows, as long ago he had done with Krista. And here, just as he who praying with a rosary takes and pushes one bead after another, so Venik dwelt in memory on Krista, and word by word repeated everything he had ever said with her, everything he had ever felt for her, each single recollection was like a single bead of the rosary, and the whole remembrance was like a single prayer. Sometimes these prayers soothed him, but yet it was so only apparently. Then again it seemed to him either that he felt surfeited, or that he had not begun to be satisfied at all.
Sometimes wishing neither to go to villages where he was known, nor to those where he was unknown, he prowled around so purposely and futilely, that when he tried to recall that wandering to mind, all he knew was that he sat on the hill-side at the outskirts of the wood beside the hollow tree. It was passing strange to him. Like a heavy dream rested upon him all that had taken place beyond that spot of ground, and that had ended there. He peered into the tree, and there yet lay Krista’s couch of leaves and moss as though he had strewed it there that very day. And here he flung himself on this couch and embraced the whole of it in a wild frenzy of passion. Then he laid himself down on it and lay awake or dreamt. He reflected how constant were those fallen leaves and that shrunken moss in comparison with man. Deprived of the sunlight and the sun’s warm beams, it had not proved unfaithful to its post. In the hollow, worm-eaten tree, he had laid that moss and foliage, and he found it there whensoever he returned.
Here it seemed to him that after all it was impossible that he was so deserted as he held himself to be. He got up, ranged the wood once more, and shouted “Krista! Krista!” but there was no reply; there was not even her footprint, there was not even he
