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."

Perhaps I am a little fickle by nature, and this disposition,
developed under the influence of the barren, empty, worthless
sentiments I met with in the world,--this might have dried up my heart
and corrupted it altogether; in which case Anie