I laid some stress on the “to-morrow,” and Aniela caught the meaning, for she gave me a long look; but my aunt, all unconscious, asked:—­

“Are you going to see him to-morrow?”

“We ought to go and see his play, and if Aniela agrees we will all go to-morrow.”

The dear girl looked at me shyly but trustingly, and said, with indescribable sweetness:—­

“I will go with great pleasure.”

There was a moment when I could scarcely contain myself, and felt I ought to speak there and then; but I had said “to-morrow,” and refrained.

I feel like a man who shuts his eyes and ears before taking the final plunge.  But I really think it is a costly pearl I shall find at the bottom of the deep.

CASA OSORIA, 6 March.

Yesterday I arrived at Rome.  My father is not quite so bad as I had feared.  His left arm and the left side of his body are almost paralyzed, but the doctor tells me his heart is not threatened, and that he may live for years.

7 March.

I left Aniela in doubt, expectation, and suspense.  But I could not do otherwise.  The day following the Sniatynskis’ visit, the very day I was going to ask Aniela to be my wife, I received a letter from my father telling me about his illness.

“Make haste, dear boy,” he wrote, “for I should like to see you before I die, and I feel my bark very close to the shore.”

After the receipt of such a letter I took the first train, and never stopped until I reached Rome.  When leaving Ploszow I had very little hope to find my father alive.  In vain my aunt tried to comfort me, saying if things were so bad he would surely have sent a telegram instead of a letter.

I know my father’s little oddities, among which is a rooted dislike to telegrams.  But my aunt’s composure was only put on, at the bottom she felt as frightened as myself.

In the hurry, the sudden shock, and under the horror of my father’s likely death, I could not speak of love and marriage.  It seemed against nature, almost a brutal thing, to whisper words of love, not knowing whether at the same time my father might not be breathing his last.  They all understood that, and especially Aniela.

“I will write to you from Rome,” I said before starting; to which she replied:  “May God comfort you first.”

She trusts me altogether.  Rightly or wrongly, I have the reputation of fickleness in regard to women, and Aniela must have heard remarks about it; maybe it is for that very reason the dear girl shows such unbounded confidence in me.  I understand, and can almost hear the pure soul saying:  “They wrong you,—­you are not fickle; and those who accuse you of fickleness do not know what love means, and did not love you as truly and deeply as I love you.”