At nine o’clock sharp in the morning everything was ready for
departure, as she had ordered. We left the little Carpathian health-
resort in a comfortable light carriage. The most interesting drama
of my life had reached a point of development whose denouement it was
then impossible to foretell.
So far everything went well. I sat beside Wanda, and she chatted
very graciously and intelligently with me, as with a good friend,
concerning Italy, Pisemski’s new novel, and Wagner’s music. She wore
a sort of Amazonesque travelling-dress of black cloth with a short
jacket of the same material, set with dark fur. It fitted closely and
showed her figure to best advantage. Over it she wore dark furs. Her
hair wound into an antique knot, lay beneath a small dark fur-hat
from which a black veil hung. Wanda was in very good humor; she fed
me candies, played with my hair, loosened my neck cloth and made a
pretty cockade of it; she covered my knees with her furs and
stealthily pressed the fingers of my hand. When our Jewish driver
persistently went on nodding to himself, she even gave me a kiss, and
her cold lips had the fresh frosty fragrance of a young autumnal
rose, which blossoms alone amid bare stalks and yellow leaves and
upon whose calyx the first frost has hung tiny diamonds of ice.
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