Stas

“ Is not that Stella? He leans out of the carriage window, but it is dark, and she is closely veiled. And yet he could swear that it is she. She vanishes in the Hôtel ----, in the house where he called upon Zino Capito this very day.
For one brief moment all the evil that Stasy said of Stella confuses his brain; then he compresses his lips: he cannot believe evil of her. A malicious chance has maligned her. She must have a double in Paris.
CHAPTER XXXVI. LOST AGAIN.
How Stella has looked forward to this ball! ”

“ With the extreme graciousness which all great ladies whose social position is partly compromised testify towards their thoroughly respectable sisters, the Princess rises and offers her hand to both Stella and her mother. The Baroness smiles absently; Stella does not smile, and barely touches with her finger-tips the hand extended to her. Meanwhile, Stasy has recognized in Fräulein Fuhrwesen an old acquaintance from Zalow. ”

“ Jack Leskjewitsch always used to declare that Stasy's shoulders were shaped like a champagne-bottle. Stella wonders whether anywhere in the world can be found a pair of more sloping shoulders than those which that fur-trimmed circular fails to conceal. Both ladies devote their entire attention for a time to their supper ”

“ Stasy asks under her breath.
Baron Rohritz makes no reply: perhaps such talk is to his taste.
Meanwhile, Stella goes on in the same satirical tone: "As soon as some one of these æsthetic proprietors has come to a decision as to where the piano is to stand, we shall certainly be invited to admire the new furniture. Then mamma will look up from her books and say, 'I have no time; but if you want to go, pray do as you please.' Mamma never cares what I do or where I go." Stella's soft voice trembles; she shakes her head, passes her hand over her eyes, and runs on: "Even the walks are spoiled ”

“ My daughter was very happy in her domestic life in Stassfurt. She was married from Lady Ripon’s house on Putney Heath, where a grand breakfast was provided for a large party of friends. Lady de Grey, Lord Goderich, Colonel Bertie Gordon, Mr. and Mrs. Dupré, my sons, George, Egmont and Henry, Mr. ”

“ Staza gave to Frank flowers and colours, and Frank gave to Staza singing and melodious sounds.
But they also penetrated the rocky wildernesses and ravines of the woodland, and lingered there awhile. Only that Staza especially thought that it would be too much to sit there every day, that it would oppress her too heavily. Because in that ravine there was not any sound to be heard, everything was, as it were, embedded in silence, and if a step rustled it startled you. The rocky walls stood narrowly opposed to one another: if they had had hands they could have stretched them out and shaken them. ”

“ Nature and chance lovingly made good to them the deficiencies of home life. We mean by nature the apparition of the heavens, and we mean by chance heaven’s divine providence, and we have two instructors with which few homes can be compared.
Staza took him with her to the cemetery, and there they beheld face to face the serious side of life. Frank took Staza into the fields and to the open wold, and they recognised the smiles of the green turf on the earth, the azure blue of the firmament of heaven, the laverock which fluttered like a singing messenger from one to the other. ”

“ That no doubt was the difference for Staza expressed in the most general terms. But otherwise she here entered into a new world, and still it appeared to her as though it was a world akin to the one she knew before. True, when she and Frank came out of the graves or from the graves themselves into the fields, gaiety, potent even to excess and delight seized upon her spirits, her soul soared aloft with the very skylarks, and fluttered into the blue of heaven and the clear transparent ether. ”

“ And this expedition into the wood was for Staza something unutterably charming and wonderful. From Bartos, the gravedigger, she heard how robbers fell upon him in the woods and how he defended himself. From Frank she heard how a panic seized a man when he retired to its rocky wildernesses. And when she came thither with Frank, she saw trees like giants, she heard the murmur as of a mighty river, she felt the breath of flowers, she felt the chill of the woodland, her little soul opened and something of the great unknown entered into it. ”

“ N the cemetery at Bartos’ house, consequently with Staza and the gravedigger, were Frank and old Loyka. They conducted together their modest household, Frank busying himself about the management of all outside the house, and Staza devoting herself to domestic duties.
Frank and Staza had reached an age, when life wishes to burst forth in the song of the skylark. Where such an eye directs its gaze, the bud unfolds, the rose blossoms. The sky is draped in a garment of transparent blue, every star hath its own language, every ray of moonlight brings a message down to earth. ”

“ This, Grom told me, was the realm haunted by Satha, the great serpent.
Let me speak of Satha. There is nothing like him on earth today, nor has there been for countless ages. Like the meat-eating dinosaur, like old sabre-tooth, he was too terrible to exist. Even then he was a survival of a grimmer age when life and its forms were cruder and more hideous. There were not many of his kind then, though they may have existed in great numbers in the reeking ooze of the vast jungle-tangled swamps still further south. ”

“ At first Frank did not at all comprehend why as soon as ever Staza entered the fields she grew so full of mirth and rapture. Her little eyes flashed playfully, she tripped along and skipped about as though she were on wires, her face joy itself, her words like songs. Bnt it could not be otherwise—man was not created to be exclusively sad and serious—gaiety is just as necessary as the sunlight; the young heart of little Staza was a proof of this: unconsciously she wished to compensate herself for all from which, equally unconsciously, she had been hitherto excluded. ”

“ Monck, and I shall think myself very fortunate to secure him. You will use your influence, I hope, to induce him to accept?"
"But of course," she said.
"Poor Stella!" said Bernard. "And she hates India!"
She turned upon him almost in anger. "How dare you pity me? I love anywhere that I can be with him."
"So like a woman!" commented Bernard. "Or is it something in the air? I'll never bring Tessa out here when she's grown up, or she'll marry and be stuck here for the rest of her life."
"You can do as you like with Tessa," said Stella, and turned again to Sir Reginald. ”

“ It appeared to him—novice in locomotive riding as he was—that every moment the steel-shod steed was about to leave the track and take to the fields. Singular too, it was neither cold nor windy; for nestling close against the iron boiler head both felt quite comfortable.
"Tommy," said Ben, "suppose we should catch up a horse?"
"Then we'd be a horse ahead," replied Tom. "I met a tramp who had taken a ride on a cow-catcher on the New York Central. He was bound for Buffalo. Well sir, they caught up a big pig, and landed it all unhurt, but terribly scared, right into the tramp's lap. ”

“ When Staza was gone, Bartos said, “You know, I suppose Frank, that Staza is a child not born in wedlock.”
“But all the same, a child,” responded Frank.
“That she does not know, neither do I know, nor perhaps does anybody know who was her father.”
“Is there any need to know it,” enquired Frank.
“That people will talk about this and will say, ‘Look! there goes Frank Loyka arm in arm with his wife,’ and they will laugh at her origin.”
“Why should a man trouble himself about an origin?”
“Every one thinks his or her origin the important thing and acts accordingly.” ”

“ Loyka, however, was of a different opinion, and awoke Frank, and this caused Staza also to awake. The boy was drowsy, leapt to his feet, and looked about him. Over the burial ground streamed the white light of the moon, the crosses stretched forth their gaunt arms, by the grave stood his father and bade him come home with him. Frank did not at once collect his ideas; only he knew that he was with Staza and that he was not at home.
“Let him be; children are children,” said Bartos. ”

“ After providing herself with a few possible candidates for the marriage, the enterprising Stella spent long laborious hours making the yard surrounding the red cottage attractive, with morning-glory vines and wild-cucumber; and built herself a little temple that was very becoming to her type of beauty; and when the young men from the technical school came, in their clean collars, and dark suits, with beautiful creases down the front legs of their trousers, to call on Miss Martin, she usually chanced to be sitting in her little shrine. ”

“ At five o'clock that afternoon, when Stella, with a hundred or so other women, emerged from the big black building through the little opening at the bottom (like the opening cut at the bottom of a big black hogshead; every little while a thin dark stream of humanity would pour out of the building; it housed over a hundred small factories) , the air was clear and crisp and cold. Stella stepped out of the little stream, once on the sidewalk, stood still, and gazed straight up. ”

“ As they walked back slowly through the forest Gregor began to talk, and the boy kept close beside him, listening eagerly to every word.
"The first thing, Sasha," said he, "is to get knowledge. You must learn, somehow, to read and write, and count figures. I must tell you all I know, about everything in the world, but that's very little; and it is so mixed up in my head that I don't rightly know where to begin. It's a blessing I have not forgotten much; what I picked up I held on to, and now I see the reason why. There's nothing you can't use, if you wait long enough." ”

“ I will have no part with a Man who can blow hot and cold from the same mouth.”
[178]
[179]
THE STAG AT THE LAKE
A STAG, one hot day, came to drink from a clear lake, and stopped to look at his own image in the water.
“How beautiful are my fine spreading horns!” said he. “How strong and graceful they are, branching from each side of my head! What a pity it is that my legs should be so thin and ugly!”
Just at this moment a lion came crashing through the forest and made ready to spring upon him. Away went the stag! and the legs that he had despised would soon have carried him out of danger ”

“ Therefore, during the spring and summer and early fall these young men seldom caught a glimpse of her mother in the ugly mouse-colored wrapper and flat shoes shuffling about in the kitchen, washing dishes, or mixing bread. They never had a chance to discover that the red cottage lacked a dining-room. Later, after Stella's charms had worked their blinding enchantment, it was her theory that the skeletons inside the house were less to be feared. ”

“ The human creatures of Stazza average a trifle larger in size than we, but they travel horizontally in water like a large fish. The limbs support the body in rest, and in traveling are used like the hind legs of a frog, only more gracefully. The arms closely resemble ours and have an infinite variety of uses. In addition, there are four fin-like arms that fold into the body when at rest, but are spread for service when traveling. In all it must be admitted that these Stazza people are capable of traveling more rapidly, and covering longer distances with much less fatigue than are we. ”

“ LIZA You want me back only to pick up your slippers and put up with your tempers and fetch and carry for you.
HIGGINS I haven't said I wanted you back at all.
LIZA Oh, indeed. Then what are we talking about?
HIGGINS About you, not about me. If you come back I shall treat you just as I have always treated you. I can't change my nature; and I don't intend to change my manners. My manners are exactly the same as Colonel Pickering's.
LIZA That's not true. He treats a flower girl as if she was a duchess.
HIGGINS And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl. ”

“ Seth hastened to Paradise. The way was barren, vegetation was scanty and of sombre colours; over all lay the black prints of his father’s and mother’s feet. Presently the walls surrounding Paradise appeared. Around them nature revived, the earth was covered with verdure and dappled with flowers. The air vibrated with exquisite music. Seth was dazzled with the beauty which surrounded him, and he walked on forgetful of his mission. Suddenly there flashed before him a wavering line of fire, upright, like a serpent of light continuously quivering. ”

“ We remember home things out here, all of us. Stella like the rest. Why, I thought that I knew her whole life in England, and here's a definite part of it—perhaps a very important part—of which I am utterly ignorant. ”

“ Oh, had her mother heard? Was her mother awake? No, Laurel thought not. Her breathing was heavy and slightly audible. The hand that had grasped hers so tightly a little while ago was limp and lifeless now. Her whole body was limp and lifeless. It moved slightly with the motion of the train, as unresisting as the curtains.
6
Oh, had Lollie heard? Was she awake? No, Stella thought not. Her soft breathing was as regular as the swinging of a pendulum. The arm that encircled her waist was as consciousless as a sleeping baby's. ”

“ For instance, when I go down that alley to the station, as I shall soon with Nance, and pass the workmen at their doors, I know perfectly well that they’ll look at me and say to themselves, ‘There goes that fool again,’ or, ‘There goes that slouching idiot from the cottage,’ but that’s not all, Tassar. They soon have the sense to see that I’m the kind of person who shrinks from being noticed and that pleases them. ”