We both, Aniela and I, understood perfectly well that Pani Sniatynska, calling us the young people, was not referring only to our age.  Besides, she repeated the same thing several times during dinner:  “the young people,” “the young couple,” as if making a pointed difference between us two and the elder ladies.  But there was such real sympathy for us in the friendly eyes; such a pricking up of her little ears to hear what we were saying to each other; and the little woman looked so charming withal that I forgive her readily her good-natured meddling.  I have arrived at such a state of infatuation that this coupling of our names rather gladdens than irritates me.  Aniela too seemed to hear it with pleasure.  In her efforts to please the Sniatynskis and the attentions she bestowed on them during dinner, she truly looked like a young bride, who receives dear visitors for the first time in her new home.  At the sight of this my aunt’s heart seemed to swell, and she said many kind and polite things to both Sniatynskis.  I noticed a wonderful thing, which I should not believe had I not seen it with my own eyes.  Pani Sniatynska blushes up to her ears when anybody praises her husband!  To blush with pleasure when her husband is praised after eight years of married life!  Surely, I committed an egregious mistake writing as I did about Polish women.

The dinner passed off very pleasantly.  A married couple, like these two, are born matchmakers.  The very sight of them sets people thinking:  “If married life is like that, let us go and commit matrimony.”  I at least saw it for the first time in a quite different light,—­not as the prose of life, a commonplace, more or less skilfully disguised indifference, but as a thing to be desired.

Aniela evidently read our future in the same light; I saw it in her eyes shining with happiness.

After dinner I remained in the dining-room with Sniatynski, who liked a quiet talk over a glass of cognac after his coffee.  The elder ladies went to the drawing-room, and Aniela took Pani Sniatynska upstairs to show her some photographs of Volhynia.  I questioned Sniatynski about his new play, the fate of which seemed to make him a little anxious.  Our conversation drifted on to those times when we both tried our sprouting wings.  He told me how afterwards, step by step, he had worked his way upward; how he had been full of doubts, and still doubted his power, in spite of having acquired a certain reputation.

“Tell me,” I asked, “what do you do with your fame?”

“How do you mean what I do with my fame?”

“For instance, do you wear it as a crown on your head, or as a golden fleece round your neck? do you put it over your writing-desk, or hang it up in your drawing-room?  I only ask as a man who has no idea what to do with it if he once obtains it?”