Jasiek’s return and reconciliation with Tereska turns an affair long discussed as village gossip into a crisis of immediate consequence: a husband comes home unexpectedly, a wife confesses, and her lover is forced to face the difference between desire and responsibility. Jasiek does not answer betrayal with the violence Tereska fears. He carries her home in tears, offers tenderness rather than punishment, and leaves Mateusz with shame and a promise of lasting enmity.

The unexpected return and the news

Jasiek comes back from the army weeks earlier than Tereska expected. She is away picking flax at the priest’s when Jagustynka rushes in with the news: Tereska’s husband has returned looking well and plainly longing for his family. The timing sharpens the shock. Tereska is at work, unaware that the life she has tried to keep separate from her marriage is about to meet it face to face.

The news strikes Antek deeply. He listens without answering, while Hanka and another woman worry about what Jasiek’s discovery may mean for Tereska. Jagustynka condemns the unequal judgment that awaits her: men may pursue affairs with little blame, she argues, while a woman bears the disgrace and punishment. If Tereska must answer for what happened, Jagustynka insists, Mateusz should be held to the same account. Her protest frames the private crisis as a question of village justice and gendered reputation, even as another woman replies that this order of things has endured for ages.

By evening, Jagustynka returns from the village in tears. She has seen Jasiek and Tereska sitting together, crying, with the gifts he brought her spread across the table. Kozłowa has taken Jasiek under her wing and told him the whole story. The presents make the disclosure painfully concrete: they are tokens of a homecoming and a marriage still capable of tenderness, now lying before a couple who cannot yet speak except through tears. Jagustynka reports that Jasiek is cursing Mateusz. Antek immediately goes to Podlesie to warn his friend.

Tereska turns to Mateusz

Antek finds Mateusz at Szymek’s, sitting with Nastusia. Once Antek has told him what has happened, Mateusz is so overcome that he can scarcely respond. Later, he learns that Tereska has been threatening to drown herself. Fear keeps him on the porch through supper: he cannot eat, listens toward Jasiek’s nearby orchard, smokes repeatedly, and trembles despite trying to curse himself, curse women, or make light of the situation. He considers going into the village to be among other people but stays, waiting anxiously.

After nightfall Tereska comes to him and clings to his neck, saying she has waited a long time for him. She recounts the confrontation at home: she returned from the flax work to find Jasiek standing pale in the house, demanding the truth. She confessed rather than try to deny what had happened. Jasiek seized an axe, and she thought he meant to kill her; she even told him to do so, believing death might release them both. But he did not strike her. Instead, he sat and wept. Tereska finds that restraint almost harder to bear than the beating she had feared: she feels guilty, helpless, and unsure where she can go, and begs Mateusz to save her from what she may do to herself.

The failed appeal and Jasiek’s choice

Mateusz answers her distress with kisses and caresses, nodding along while avoiding a clear promise. He is looking about fearfully, imagining that Jasiek might be waiting nearby. Tereska sees through him. She accuses him of lying and says he is afraid of Jasiek’s stick; she contrasts Mateusz’s evasions with Jasiek’s kindness and the gifts her husband brought. Her appeal collapses into fury and grief: she attacks Mateusz as treacherous, then falls to the ground sobbing.

Jasiek emerges from the orchard and approaches his wife. Rather than threaten or strike her, he speaks gently, tells her not to fear him, and says she has suffered enough. He picks her up, carries her across the stile, and takes her home. The gesture resolves the immediate danger without erasing the betrayal. Calling Mateusz out, Jasiek declares that he will never forgive the wrong done to him. Mateusz says nothing; shame and distress overwhelm him, and he goes to the Lipce inn, where he drinks through the night.

Reconciliation, reputation, and consequence

Jasiek’s reconciliation with Tereska is not a restoration of the old marriage to an untouched state. His tenderness gives her a way back into the household at the moment she expects rejection or violence, but his vow makes clear that he regards Mateusz’s part in the affair as an enduring injury. Tereska is taken home; Mateusz is left outside that reconciliation, unable to act as her rescuer and unable to answer Jasiek.

The village hears the story almost immediately. Jasiek’s conduct is recounted with astonishment and considerable respect: the man who returned to discover his wife’s infidelity did not beat her, but brought her home in tears and kindness. The episode therefore turns on a reversal of expectation. Tereska anticipates death or abuse; Mateusz’s professed concern gives way to fear; and Jasiek, despite his grief, chooses mercy toward his wife while withholding forgiveness from her lover. Jagustynka’s protest over the unequal treatment of women remains beside that outcome: Tereska is still the subject of public scrutiny, while Jasiek’s response becomes a measure by which the community judges him.