nd would have given anything if I could
have shouted out to him: "You are a bankrupt already in one thing, for
your wife does not love you. You see the Cascades; jump in, set her
free, and give her the chance of some happiness." But I remained
silent, chewing the bitter cud of my reflections. Kromitzki, however
commonplace he might be, though capable of selling Gluchow and taking
advantage of his wife's trust in him, was not the villain I took him
for. It was a disappointment and destroyed the plan to which for the
moment I had clung as to a plank of safety. Again I felt powerless,
and saw looming up before me the vast solitude. Nevertheless, I held
fast to that purpose because I understood that unless I could do
something, I should go mad. "It will at least prepare the ground for
anything that may turn up, and accustom Kromitzki to the thought of
parting with Aniela," I said to myself. As I said before, nobody knows
in what state Kromitzki's affairs are, but I suppose that a man who
speculates is liable to losses as well as to gains. I said to him:--

"I do not know whether your principles are, strictly speaking,
business principles, but at any rate they are the sentiments of an
honorable man, and I respect you for them. You said, if I understood
you, that a man has no right to drag his wife with him into poverty."

"No, I did not say that; I only said that to sell one's wife is a
villany; the wife ought to share her husband's fate. I think but
little of a fair-weather wife, who wants to break her marriage vows
because her husband cannot give her the comforts of life."

"Suppose she did not agree, he might set her free against her will.
Besides, if she knew that by submitting to a divorce, she could save
her husband, duty well understood would bid her to yield."

"It is unpleasant even to talk about such things."

"Why? are you sorry for the Boyar?"

"Not I; I shall always hold him for a blackguard."

"Because you do not look at things from an objective point of view.
But that is not astonishing. A man like you, with whom everything is
prospering, cannot enter into the psychology of a bankrupt unless
he be a philosopher; and philosophy has nothing to do with making
millions."

I did not wish to prolong the conversation, so utterly disgusted was
I with my own perversity. I had sown the seed,--a very small and
pitiable seed to produce anything; and yet I clung to it tenaciously.
One thing revived my hope. At the