"Speak but one word to me," said Andrii, and he took her satin-skinned
hand. A sparkling fire coursed through his veins at the touch, and he
pressed the hand lying motionless in his.

But she still kept silence, never taking the kerchief from her face,
and remaining motionless.

"Why are you so sad? Tell me, why are you so sad?"

She cast away the handkerchief, pushed aside the long hair which fell
over her eyes, and poured out her heart in sad speech, in a quiet
voice, like the breeze which, rising on a beautiful evening, blows
through the thick growth of reeds beside the stream. They rustle,
murmur, and give forth delicately mournful sounds, and the traveller,
pausing in inexplicable sadness, hears them, and heeds not the fading
light, nor the gay songs of the peasants which float in the air as
they return from their labours in meadow and stubble-field, nor the
distant rumble of the passing waggon.

"Am not I worthy of eternal pity? Is not the mother that bore me
unhappy? Is it not a bitter lot which has befallen me? Art not thou a
cruel executioner, fate? Thou has brought all to my feet--the highest
nobles in the land, the richest gentlemen, counts, foreign barons, all
the flower of our knighthood. All loved me, and any one of them would
have counted my love the greatest boon. I had but to beckon, and the
best of them, the handsomest, the first in beauty and birth would have
become my husband. And to none of them didst thou incline my heart, O
bitter fate; but thou didst turn it against the noblest heroes of our
land, and towards a stranger, towards our enemy. O most holy mother of
God! for what sin dost thou so pitilessly, mercilessly, persecute me?