I remained thus an hour, stretched out on the couch, thinking how and when I would do it; and that very abstraction of my thoughts from Kromitzki seemed to calm me.  Such a thing as the taking of one’s life wants some preparation, and this also forced my thoughts into another groove.  I remembered at once that my travelling revolver was of too small a calibre.  I got up to look at it and resolved to buy a new one.  I began to calculate ways and means to make it appear an accident.  All this of course as a mere theory.  Nothing was settled into a fixed purpose.  I might call it rather a contemplating the possibility of suicide than a purpose.  On the contrary, I was now certain it would not come to that soon.  Now that I knew the door by which I could escape I thought I might wait a little to see how far my evils would extend, and what new tortures fate had in store for me.  I was consumed by a burning and painful curiosity as to what would happen next, how those two would meet, and how Aniela would face me?  I became very tired, and dressed as I was I fell into a troubled sleep, full of Kromitzkis, eyeglasses, revolvers, and all sorts of confused combinations of things and people.

I woke up late.  The servant told me that Pan Kromitzki had gone to Ploszow.  My first impulse was to follow and see them together.  But when seated in the carriage I suddenly felt I could not bear it, that it would be too great a trial, and might hasten my escape through the open door into the unknown; and I gave orders to drive somewhere else.

The greatest pessimist instinctively avoids pain, and fights against it with all his might.  He clutches at every hope and expects relief through every change.  There awoke within me such a desire to make them go to Gastein as if my very life depended upon it.  To make them leave Ploszow!  The thought did not give me rest, and took such possession of me that I gave my whole mind to its realization.  This did not present great difficulties.  The ladies were almost ready to start.  Kromitzki had come unexpectedly, evidently intending to give his wife a surprise.  A few days later he would not have found us at Ploszow.  I went to the railway office and secured places in a sleeping-car for Vienna; then sent a messenger with a letter to my aunt telling her I had bought tickets for the following day, as all the carriages were engaged for the following week, and we should have to go to-morrow.

26 June.

I still linger over the last moments spent at Warsaw.  These memories impressed themselves so strongly on my mind that I cannot pass them over in silence.  The day following Kromitzki’s arrival I had a strange sensation.  It seemed to me that I did not love Aniela any longer, and yet could not live without her.  It was the first time I felt this—­I might call it psychical dualism.  Formerly my love went through its regular course.  I said to myself, “I love her, therefore I desire her,”—­with