Just at this time the daily papers are fully occupied with the divorce of the beautiful Pani Korytzka.  Everybody talks about it, and my aunt, who is related to the husband, is greatly shocked.  I resolved to make the most of my opportunity, and plant ideas in Aniela’s mind that had not been there before.

“You are quite wrong, dear aunt, to blame Pani Korytzka.  To me it seems that she acts as a true and honest woman should.  Where love begins, human will ends,—­even you must acknowledge that.  If Pani Korytzka loves somebody else, nothing remains for her but to leave her husband.  I know what you are going to say, and also what Aniela thinks,—­that duty still remains; is it not so?”

“I think you too must be of the same opinion,” replied Aniela.

“Most certainly.  The question is which way lies Pani Korytzka’s duty.”

I do not know why, but the young doctor stipulated that he did not recognize any free will, but afterwards listened attentively, evidently pleased with the boldness of my views.

But seeing astonishment on Aniela’s face, I went on quickly:—­

“What can there be more barbarous or unnatural than to ask a woman to sacrifice the man she loves to the man she does not love?  Religious beliefs may be in contradiction with one another, but they all agree upon the same ethics, that marriage is based upon love.  What then is matrimony?  It is either something inviolable and essentially holy when resting upon such a basis, or if otherwise, only a contract in contradiction to religion and morality, and as such ought to be dissolved.  Otherwise speaking, a woman’s duties spring from her feelings, and not from a number of more or less solemn ceremonies, which in themselves are only so many forms.  I say this because I am a man who puts truth above mere forms.  I know the word ‘faithlessness’ sounds very terrible.  But do not delude yourselves with the notion that a woman is faithless at the moment she leaves her husband.  She is faithless the very moment she feels that her love for him is gone.  What follows after is only a question of her capacity to bring things to a logical conclusion, of her courage and her heart that knows, or does not know, the meaning of love.  Pani Korytzka loved the man for whom she divorces her husband before she was married; the marriage was contracted in a moment of misunderstanding, she mistaking an exhibition of jealousy for indifference.  This was her only mistake; which she wants to correct now that she understands that it was not right to sacrifice the man she loved to the man she looked upon with indifference; nobody but those who will not see can call her bad or a hypocrite.”

There was as much fiction as truth in what I was saying.  I knew my aunt would never agree to the theory that the will ends when love steps in; but I said it to impress Aniela with the idea that there was no doubt about it.  That first lover was also an invention of my own, to make the story more to the point.  But I was perfectly sincere when speaking about the rights and duties springing from feeling.  It is quite another thing that I might not stand up for this theory if it did not suit me just then; but man is always subjective, especially the man who has doubted all objective truths.