A month has passed with monotonous regularity, heavy work, and a melancholy hunger, hunger for her, who is inflicting all these torments on me.
I am under the gardener's orders; I help him lop the trees and prune the hedges, transplant flowers, turn over the flower beds, sweep the gravel paths; I share his coarse food and his hard cot; I rise and go to bed with the chickens. Now and then I hear that our mistress is amusing herself, surrounded by admirers. Once I heard her gay laughter even down here in the garden.
I seem awfully stupid to myself. Was it the result of my present life, or was I so before? The month is drawing to a close--the day after tomorrow. What will she do with me now, or has she forgotten me, and left me to trim hedges and bind bouquets till my dying day?
A written order.
"The slave Gregor is herewith ordered to my personal service.
Wanda Dunajew."
With a beating heart I draw aside the damask curtain on the following morning, and enter the bed-room of my divinity. It is still filled with a pleasant half darkness.
"Is it you, Gregor?" she asks, while I kneel before the fire-place, building a fire. I tremble at the sound of the beloved voice. I cannot see her herself; she is invisible behind the curtains of the four-poster bed.
"Yes, my mistress," I reply.
"How late is it?"
"Past nine o'clock."
"Breakfast."
I hasten to get it, and then kneel down with the tray beside her bed.
"Here is breakfast, my mistress."
Wanda draws back the curtains, and curiously enough at the first glance when I see her among the pillows with loosened flowing hair, she seems an absolute stranger, a beautiful woman, but the beloved soft lines are gone. This face is hard and has an expression of weariness and satiety.
Or is it simply that formerly my eye did not see this?
She fixes her green eyes upon me, more with curiosity than with menace, perhaps even somewhat pityingly, and lazily pulls the dark sleeping fur on which she lies over the bared shoulder.
At this moment she is very charming, very maddening, and I feel my blood rising to my head and heart. The tray in my hands begins to sway. She notices it and reached out for the whip which is lying on the toilet-table.
"You are awkward, slave," she says furrowing her brow.
I lower my looks to the ground, and hold the tray as steadily as possible. She eats her breakfast, yawns, and stretches her opulent limbs in the magnificent furs.