“Do you think I shall stop here without you? We will go and be in service together,” spoke out Venik.
Then Krista could have fallen on Venik’s neck and have kissed him all over. To have only him and he not to cast her off,—he to wish to entwine his fate with her’s,—was not that enough to make her feel at that instant twice a woman? was not that enough to bring all at once into her heart spring time, fair weather, flowers, and all sweet songs?
“We will find a place where we shall be allowed to play and sing together,” said Venik warmly, and as if in proof thereof, he forthwith loosed his violin from its nail and began to play as if he wished to say good bye to all the birds in the wood, and as if he gave them to understand that he was going to search for himself a hillside, a wood, and a hollow tree,—everything in another corner of the world. Krista sang to his accompaniment, and it seemed quite impossible for these two beings ever to be separated, for that playing and that singing to be isolated from one another. They were so closely united that it was impossible to think of them as two.
“Do you know what,” cried Venik of a sudden, with as much delight as if he had found a treasure, “we will not go out to service anywhere. We will go into the world, I with my violin, and you shall sing to it.”
They knew what the world was like which they would have entered on as farm-servants behind the
