Bowing stiffly, he takes his right foot out of the stirrup, and prepares to dismount.
"You might have failed to see me, and ridden farther. I thought you would," I remark, with a faint uninterested smile.
"As it happened, I did not fail."
"So I see."
"Did you want me to fail?"
"I did."
"For what reason, pray?"
"I was in a very pleasant mood—a sort of pantheistic mingling with Nature, that requires solitude to be enjoyed."
"All the same, I am going to stay," he says with a determined air, and carefully ties his horse's reins to a pine-branch.
A silence follows. Janusz brushes a few pine-cones out of his way, and then seats himself by my side. I sit up likewise, arrange the wreath of corn-flowers on my head, and lean back against a trunk.
"Do you not see that we are at odds?" he asks at length.
"That may very well be," I answer with some disdain. "And how did you find out where I was?"
"I followed you."
