uth. "You are virtuous," I said inwardly to
Aniela, "because you have no heart. If a dog attached himself to you
as I am attached, something would be due to him. You have never shown
me any indulgence, or any spark of pity; you have never confessed to
me any tender feeling, and you have taken from me what you could.
If you were able, you would deprive me of your presence
altogether,--although you had the certainty that if I could not see
you my eyes would perish forever. But I begin to understand you now,
begin to see that your inflexibility is so great because your heart is
so small. You are cold and unfeeling, and your virtue is nothing
but an enormous egoism, that wants above everything to be left
undisturbed, and for that peace is capable of sacrificing all else."

During the whole time of breakfast I did not say a word. When alone
in my own room I held my head with both hands and with a weary,
over-wrought brain, began to think again of what had happened. My
thoughts were still very bitter. Women of narrow hearts often remain
unyielding through a certain philistinism of virtue. The first thing
with them is to keep their accounts in order, like any tradesman. They
fear love, as the grocer fears street-risings, war, riots, exalted
ideas, and audacious flights of fancy. Peace at any price, because
peace is good for business. Everything that rises above the rational
and commonplace standard of life is bad, and deserves the contempt of
reasonable beings. Virtue has its heights and precipices, but also its
level plains.

I now struggled with the exceedingly painful question whether Aniela
did not belong to that kind of commonplace virtuous women, who want to
keep their accounts in order, and reject love because it reaches above
the ordinary standard of their hearts and minds. I searched in the
past for proofs. "Who knows," I said to myself, "whether her simple
ethical code is not resting upon such a foundation?" I had believed
her to be one of those exceptional natures, different from all other
women, inaccessible as the snowy heights of the Alps that without any
slope soar straight heavenward. And now this lofty nature considers it
the most proper thing that a husband in slippers should trample on
those snows. What does it all mean? Whenever thoughts like these crowd
my brain I feel as if I were on the brink of madness; such a rage
seizes me that if I could I would throw down, trample, and spit upon
the forces of life