but foolishness; not rectitude of conscience, but vanity.  I cannot forget, I cannot; but Pani Kromitzka will help me.  When I come to see her in her new matronly dignity, satisfied with her heroism, self-possessed, in love, or apparently so, with her husband, watching me furtively to see whether I have been punished, and punished sufficiently, full of happiness and her own virtues, the ghost of my old love will be laid, and I can go back to where the reindeer lives without Aniela’s memory following me like the sea-gulls in the track of ships.

It is possible that Pani Kromitzka will put on the airs of an injured victim, and her whole manner to me may say:  “It is your fault!” Very well.  We have seen some of that in the world.  As artificial flowers have one defect, the want of scent, artificial crowns of thorn have one advantage, they do not prick, and may be worn as a bonnet, very becoming to a pretty face.  Whenever I met one of those victims who married out of despair I felt a desire to say:  “It is not true! you were a victim maybe in good faith as long as the chosen one did not approach you in his slippers.  From that moment you ceased to be pathetic, and are only ridiculous, and the more so if you pose as a victim.”

6 April.

How beautiful and wise is the Greek word “ananke.”  It was fated that through a woman I should lose my peace of mind, though I had ceased to care for her.  The news that her ancestral seat is sold, and she herself coming to live at Ploszow, moved me so deeply that I could not sleep.  Various questions knocked at my brain, asking for admittance.  I tried to solve the question whether I had any right to lead Pani Kromitzka from the path of virtue.  I neither wish, nor will I endeavor to do so, because she has ceased to attract me; but would it be right?  I fill my life with these questions of “to be, or not to be,” because I have nothing else to do.  Thoughts like mine are not reckoned among the delights of life.  It is like the dog trying to catch his tail; he does not catch anything.  I do not prove anything, only tire myself; but have the satisfaction that another day has passed, or another night gone by.

I observe at the same time, that with all my scepticism, I am still beset with scruples worthy of the vicar of Ploszow.  The modern man is composed of so many threads that in trying to set himself right, he gets more and more entangled.  It was in vain I repeated to myself, if only in theory, that I had the right.  A voice, as from the parish church, seemed to say at intervals:  “No! no! you have not the right!” But scruples like these ought to be kept down, as for me this is a question of keeping my mind evenly balanced.  At this quiet evening time, I feel just in the humor for it.  This afternoon, at a well-known painter’s studio, I heard Mrs. Davis maintain, in discussion with two literary men, that a woman ought to be unapproachable all her life, if only “pour la nettete du plumage,”