while to speak about it, as she would not understand me; not worth while leading her on to those heights, as she would not be able to breathe there.  She might agree, in her soul, that I should go on loving her, go on suffering, since that flatters her vanity; but no compact, no union the most spiritual, no mutual belonging even in the Dantesque meaning,—­to none of these will she agree, because she understands only one belonging and one right, which is expressed in a man’s dressing-gown, and her soul cannot rise above the narrow, mean, matrimonial, book-keeping spirit.

I felt an overwhelming regret that I had not been in the wrecked train.  The regret was as much the result of physical exhaustion as of Aniela’s cruelty.  I was tired, as one who has watched night after night at the sick bed of a very dear friend, and to whom death appears as a desired rest.  And then I thought that if they had brought my mangled remains to Gastein something would perhaps have stirred in her.  Thinking of this I suddenly remembered yesterday’s Aniela, who went with my aunt in search of me.  I recalled to my mind the sudden terror and the joy close upon it, those eyes full of tears, the disordered hair; and love immeasurable, love a hundred times more real than all my thoughts and reasonings took possession of me.  It was like a great convulsive motion of the heart, which almost at once got buried in a wave of doubts.  All I had noticed that day might be explained upon quite different grounds.  Who knows whether it was I or my aunt who played the principal part in this emotion?  Besides impressionable women have always a store of sympathy at command, even for the merest stranger.  What more natural than that she should exhibit some feeling when he who was threatened by some danger was a relative?  She would naturally be horrified at the thought of my death, and rejoice at seeing me alive.  If, instead of her, Pani Sniatynska had been staying with my aunt, she too would have been terror-stricken, and I should have seen her without her gloves, and her hair in disorder.  No, in regard to that I cannot delude myself any longer.  Aniela knew very well that her departure would be to me a more dangerous catastrophe than a wound on my head or the loss of an arm or leg; and yet she did not hesitate a moment.  I was perfectly aware that it was all her doing.  She wanted to be near her husband, and what would become of me was not taken into account.

Again I felt myself growing pale with anger, hatred, and indignation, and only one step removed from madness.  “Stop a little,” I said to myself, pressing both hands against my temples; “perhaps she is seeking safety in flight because she loves you, and feels she cannot resist any longer.”  Ah me! and these thoughts sprung up, but they did not find any congenial soil and perished like the seed sown on a rock; they only roused a bitter, despairing irony.  “Yes,” something said within me, “hers is a love resembling the compassion which makes people remove the pillow from under the dying man’s head, to shorten his agony.  I shall not suffer much longer, and Kromitzki will be able to see her often and bring her such comfort as a wife expects from her husband.”