Page:Nalkowska - Kobiety (Women).djvu/300

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288
Kobiety

cheap disputes upon matters of the highest import; and even his many volumes of monographs on insects—all this has something that to me is singularly attracting!

To-day, tenderness and mutual vows once more. … Ay, we shall love, love, love each other till …

"Listen, Witold; for how long are we to be in love so?" I asked; a question I myself had not expected to put.

"Forever," he answered with absolute assurance.

"And how long is this 'forever' to last?"

"Ah, well—of course—as long as we live. Do you believe in love beyond the grave?"

"Decidedly not!"

"Then, until death. And as I shall surely be the first to drop off, I shall have the best of it." And he bowed as a courtier in Versailles, two centuries ago.

I concentrated my thoughts for a time. Behold me, sitting, clad in the raiments of ancient Greece, upon a bench of stone, my bare and shapely elbow resting on a balustrade. … Bending over the marble barrier, I look down, coldly, scrutinizingly, into the depths be-