and said anxiously, "But my mother? you took her some?"

"She is asleep."

"And my father?"

"I carried him some; he said that he would come to thank the young
lord in person."

She took the bread and raised it to her mouth. With inexpressible
delight Andrii watched her break it with her shining fingers and eat
it; but all at once he recalled the man mad with hunger, who had
expired before his eyes on swallowing a morsel of bread. He turned
pale and, seizing her hand, cried, "Enough! eat no more! you have not
eaten for so long that too much bread will be poison to you now." And
she at once dropped her hand, laid her bread upon the plate, and gazed
into his eyes like a submissive child. And if any words could
express-- But neither chisel, nor brush, nor mighty speech is capable
of expressing what is sometimes seen in glances of maidens, nor the
tender feeling which takes possession of him who receives such maiden
glances.

"My queen!" exclaimed Andrii, his heart and soul filled with emotion,
"what do you need? what do you wish? command me! Impose on me the most
impossible task in all the world: I fly to fulfil it! Tell me to do
that which it is beyond the power of man to do: I will fulfil it if I
destroy myself. I will ruin myself. And I swear by the holy cross that
ruin for your sake is as sweet--but no, it is impossible to say how
sweet! I have three farms; half my father's droves of horses are mine;
all that my mother brought my father, and which she still conceals