SOPHY OF KRAVONIA
Praslok borrowed ominous shadows from a nervous, apprehensive temperament.
No such gloom brooded over Sophy. She gave herself up to the hour: the past forgotten, the future never thought of. It was the great time of her life. Her feelings, while not less spontaneous and fresh, were more mature and more fully satisfied than when Casimir de Savres poured his love at her feet. A cry of happiness almost lyrical runs through her scanty record of these days—there was little leisure for diary or letters.
Winter was melting into spring, snow dwelled only on the hill- tops, Lake Talti was unbound and sparkled in the sun; the days grew longer, yet were far too short. To ride with him to Volseni, to hear the cheers, to see the love they bore him, to watch him at work, to seem to share the labor and the love—then to shake off the kindly clinging friends and take to a mountain-path, or wander, the reins on the horses' necks, by the margin of the lake, and come home through the late dusk, talking often, silent often, always together in thought as in bodily presence—was not this enough? "If I had to die in a month, I should owe life a tremendous debt already"—that is her own summing up; it is pleasant to remember.
It would be enough to say—love; enough with a nature ardent as hers. Yet, with love much else conspired. There was the thought of what she had done, of the things to which she was a party; there was the sense of power, the satisfaction of ambition, a promise of more things; there was the applause of Volseni as well as the devotion of the Prince; there was, too—it persisted all through her life—the funny, half-childish, and (to a severe eye) urchin-like pleas-
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