e eve of some event, but such as one feels on
remembering some good that one has lost forever, filled Janina's
heart. It was the pain of the past like the quiet remembrance of the
dead.

But those memories of Bukowiec and those lonely nights when she
dreamed, forgetting about everything, and created for herself such
wondrous worlds, now flashed upon her mind in all their vividness.
Only the memory of that exuberant and majestic nature, those vast
fields, and those silent glens full of murmurs and bird songs,
verdure, and wild grandeur swathed Janina in melancholy and lulled
her weary soul with its charms.

The woods in which she was reared, those dim depths full of
unspeakable wonders, those gigantic trees to which she was united by
a thousand affinities, outlined themselves in her mind ever more
powerfully. Janina longed for them now and listened through the
nights, for it seemed to her that she heard the grave autumnal
murmur of the forest, the somnolent rustling of its branches. It
seemed that she felt within herself the slow, endless swaying of
those giant trees, the soft motions of the verdure bathed in golden
sunlight, the joyous cry of the birds, the fragrance of the young
pine saplings and juniper bushes the whole leisurely life of nature.

Janina lay for whole hours at a time, without a word, thought, or
motion, for her soul was there in those verdant woods. She wandered
over the meadows covered with wild raspberries and waving grass,
strayed across the fields where the rye grew high like a wood,
swaying and murmuring in the breeze and gleaming with dew in the
sunlight, penetrated the groves full of the pungent smell of the
resin. She followed each road, each boundary, each wood path,
greeted everything that lived there and cried out to the fields,
woods, the hills, and the sky: "I have come! I have come!" smiling
as though she had found a lost happiness.

These invigorating memories restored Janina's health almost
entirely. On the eighth day she felt strong enough for a walk. She
was longing for the fresh air, the verdure unsoiled by city dust,
the sunlight, and the vast open spaces. She felt that the city was
stifling her, that here, at every step, she had to limit her own ego
and continually struggle against all the barriers of custom and
dependence.

Janina passed through the Place of Arms and, going beyond the
Citadel, she walked along the damp sand dunes to Bielany.

An unbroken silence enveloped