But enough of this!  I notice with a certain shame and surprise that all I have been writing has been done in order to distract my thoughts.  Yes, that is true.  I speak about landscapes, homesickness, and so forth, while all my thoughts are at Ploszow.  I did not want to acknowledge it, even to myself.  I feel restless, and something seems to weigh me down.  It is very probable that my going there and the getting over the first meeting will be easier and far simpler than I imagine.  Expectancy of anything is always oppressive.  When a young lad, I had a duel; and on the eve of the day I felt troubled.  Then, too, I tried to think of something else, and could not manage it.  My thoughts are not at all tender, not even friendly, towards Pani Kromitzka; but they swarm around me like angry bees, and I cannot drive them away.

17 April.

I have been to Ploszow, and found things very different indeed from what I had pictured to myself.  I left Warsaw at seven in the morning in a cab, counting I should be in Ploszow by eight.  The oppressive feeling still remained with me.  I had said to myself that I would not make any plans about that first meeting, or my future bearing towards her.  Let chance be my guide.  But I could not help speculating how it would be,—­how she would greet me, what she would try to make me understand, and what our future relation to each other would be.  Not having formed any plans of my own, I fancied, I do not know why that she would want to act according to a well-defined system.  Trying to fathom this, I felt almost inimical towards her.  Then again, at the thought that the meeting might cause her pain, I felt something akin to pity, and seemed to see her before me as she used to be.  I saw distinctly the low brow with the wealth of auburn hair, the long eyelashes, and the small, delicate face.  I tried to guess how she would be dressed.  Memories came back of words she had said, expressions of the face, graceful motions, dresses.  With strange pertinacity, the one memory remained with me,—­her coming into the room after she had tried to disguise her emotion by applying powder to her face.  At last these memories became so vivid as to equal a second-sight.  “There she is again,” I said to myself; and in order to pull myself together, I began talking to the driver, and asked him whether he were married; whereupon he replied that without the old woman at home, there would be no go, then said something I did not hear, as I had caught sight of the Ploszow poplars in the distance.  I had not paid any heed to the time we had been on the road.