es her up. For this reason we keep up
the conversation or the reading. It was the same to-day. But for the
doctor's presence I could speak to Aniela with the greatest freedom.

Just at this time the daily papers are fully occupied with the divorce
of the beautiful Pani Korytzka. Everybody talks about it, and my aunt,
who is related to the husband, is greatly shocked. I resolved to make
the most of my opportunity, and plant ideas in Aniela's mind that had
not been there before.

"You are quite wrong, dear aunt, to blame Pani Korytzka. To me it
seems that she acts as a true and honest woman should. Where love
begins, human will ends,--even you must acknowledge that. If Pani
Korytzka loves somebody else, nothing remains for her but to leave
her husband. I know what you are going to say, and also what Aniela
thinks,--that duty still remains; is it not so?"

"I think you too must be of the same opinion," replied Aniela.

"Most certainly. The question is which way lies Pani Korytzka's duty."

I do not know why, but the young doctor stipulated that he did
not recognize any free will, but afterwards listened attentively,
evidently pleased with the boldness of my views.

But seeing astonishment on Aniela's face, I went on quickly:--

"What can there be more barbarous or unnatural than to ask a woman to
sacrifice the man she loves to the man she does not love? Religious
beliefs may be in contradiction with one another, but they all agree
upon the same ethics, that marriage is based upon love. What then is
matrimony? It is either something inviolable and essentially holy
when resting upon such a basis, or if otherwise, only a contract
in contradiction to religion and morality, and as such ought to be
dissolved. Otherwise speaking, a woman's duties spring from her
feelings, and not from a number of more or less solemn ceremonies,
which in themselves are only so many forms. I say this because I am a
man who puts truth above mere forms. I know the word 'faithlessness'
sounds very terrible. But do not delude yourselves with the notion
that a woman is faithless at the moment she leaves her husband. She
is faithless the very moment she feels that her love for him is gone.
What follows after is only a question of her capacity to bring things
to a logical conclusion, of her courage and her heart that knows, or
does not know, the meaning of love. Pani Korytzka loved the man for
whom she divorces her husband before she was married; t