“I must tell you the great news.”

And she told me the “great news.”  When I heard it I felt the metallic taste in my mouth, and a cold sensation in my brain, exactly as I had felt that evening I met Kromitzki unexpectedly.  I went into my room.  I remember among other things that I felt an immense desire to laugh.  That ideal being, for whom even Platonic love seemed to be impermissible, and who instead of “love” used the word “friendship!” I felt a desire to laugh, and at the same time to dash my head against the wall.

I preserved nevertheless a mechanical self-possession.  It came from the consciousness that everything was over and done with; that I must go—­that there was nothing for it but to go.  That consciousness transformed me into an automaton, doing by routine everything that was necessary for my departure.  I was even conscious of keeping up appearances.  Why?  I do not know, as this did not matter now to me any longer.  Most likely it was an instinctive action of the brain, which for months had been trained in concealing the truth and keeping up appearances.  I told Pani Celina that I had seen a doctor, and that he said there was something amiss with my heart, and ordered me to go to Berlin without delay,—­and she believed it.

Not so Aniela.  I saw her eyes dilated with terror, and in her face the expression of a degraded martyr; and there were two persons within me:  one who said, “Is it her fault?” and another who despised her.  Oh, why did I love her so much?

12 September.

It is almost two weeks since I left.  They must be at Ploszow by this time.  I wrote to-day a letter to my aunt, because I was afraid she might be uneasy about me and come here to look after me.  I am sometimes astonished to find there is still somebody that cares what becomes of me.

13 September.

There are men who lead astray other men’s wives, deceive them, and afterwards throw them aside and quietly resume their every-day life.  I have never done any such thing, and if Aniela had been my victim I should have wiped the dust from off her path; no human power could have torn me from her.  There are greater crimes than mine, but upon me has fallen such a burden that it gives me the impression of an exceptional punishment; and I cannot help thinking that my love must have been a terrible crime.

This is a kind of instinctive fear, against which scepticism is no safeguard.  And yet by all moral laws it must be admitted that it would be a greater offence to lead a woman to ruin without love, and do from calculation what I did from a deep love.  Surely the responsibility cannot be greater for an immense, overpowering feeling than for a mean little weakness.

No! therefore my love is, above all, an awful calamity.  A man free from prejudices can imagine how he would feel if he were swayed by prejudice; so, too, a man who doubts may imagine how he could pray if he had the faith.  I not only have the feeling, but it breaks forth into a complaint, almost like a sincere prayer, and I say:  “If I am guilty, O God!  I have been punished severely, and a little mercy might be shown to me.”  But I cannot even imagine in what shape that mercy could come to me now!  It is impossible!