Reflecting upon this, I understood the futility of such fears.  She, to whom even that Platonic relation appears too broad, who consciously or unconsciously restricts, and does not even grant me what is due to me within these limits, should be the first to acknowledge any greater rights.  And yet the human soul, even if in hell, will never lose hope altogether.  In spite of the self-evident impossibility, I resolved to make myself safe by giving Aniela to understand that if I considered the agreement as binding, it was not the same with her.

I wanted to say many other things, especially that she was doing me a great wrong, and that my soul yearned to hear a word of love from her lips, not once but many times, and that only thus I should be able to remain on those lofty heights whereon she condemned me to dwell.  But that morning she was so gay, so cheerful and kind to me, that I had not the heart to disturb her peace.  Yesterday I could not understand how a being so full of simplicity had got me under her power and conquered me even on those fields I thought my exclusive domain.  To-day it seems clearer to me; and I have a ready and very sad hypothesis,—­she loves me less than I love her.

I knew a man who had the trick of repeating in all his sentences, “Never mind me.”  It would not be strange if I began to do the same.  For when I feel, as I do sometimes, a desire to get rid of some words that almost burn my tongue, the sudden thought that I might mar her cheerfulness, drive away the smile, and change her good disposition, renders me mute.  Ah me! how often this does happen!

The thought that I love Aniela more than she loves me has crossed my mind a hundred times; one day I think of it in one way, the next in another.  I am straying among my thoughts and look at the matter in a different light every day.  At one time it seems to me that she does not care for me very much, in fact is incapable of any strong feeling; and again, I not only think but am conscious that she has one of the deepest and most loving hearts I ever met in the world.  I have always plenty of proofs either way.  Thus I say to myself:  “If her love increases, three, four, ten times as much, will there not come a time when it will grow stronger than her resistance?” Yes.  Then it is only a question of how great her feeling is?  No.  For if the feeling were small she would not have suffered so much, and I have seen her suffer almost as much as I did myself.  Against all reasoning I have one answer:  “I have seen.”

To-day a sentence escaped her which I shall remember, for it is an answer to my doubts.  She would not have said this had I spoken about us and our love.  But I spoke in a general way, as I now always do.  I argued that it lay in the nature of feeling to be connected with action; that love produces acts of will.  When I had finished she said quietly:—­

“Not always.  One may suffer.”