, reduce the whole world to chaos and obliterate its
existence. On my journey back from Vienna I was searching for some
unearthly abode where I might love Aniela even as Dante loved
Beatrice. I built it of the sufferings from which as from fire my love
had risen purified, of my renunciations and sacrifices, and thought
that in a superhuman, simply angelic way she would be mine, and feel
that she belonged to me. And now it came into my thoughts that it was
not worth while to speak about it, as she would not understand me; not
worth while leading her on to those heights, as she would not be able
to breathe there. She might agree, in her soul, that I should go on
loving her, go on suffering, since that flatters her vanity; but no
compact, no union the most spiritual, no mutual belonging even in
the Dantesque meaning,--to none of these will she agree, because she
understands only one belonging and one right, which is expressed in a
man's dressing-gown, and her soul cannot rise above the narrow, mean,
matrimonial, book-keeping spirit.

I felt an overwhelming regret that I had not been in the wrecked
train. The regret was as much the result of physical exhaustion as
of Aniela's cruelty. I was tired, as one who has watched night after
night at the sick bed of a very dear friend, and to whom death appears
as a desired rest. And then I thought that if they had brought my
mangled remains to Gastein something would perhaps have stirred in
her. Thinking of this I suddenly remembered yesterday's Aniela, who
went with my aunt in search of me. I recalled to my mind the sudden
terror and the joy close upon it, those eyes full of tears, the
disordered hair; and love immeasurable, love a hundred times more real
than all my thoughts and reasonings took possession of me. It was
like a great convulsive motion of the heart, which almost at once
got buried in a wave of doubts. All I had noticed that day might be
explained upon quite different grounds. Who knows whether it was I
or my aunt who played the principal part in this emotion? Besides
impressionable women have always a store of sympathy at command,
even for the merest stranger. What more natural than that she should
exhibit some feeling when he who was threatened by some danger was a
relative? She would naturally be horrified at the thought of my death,
and rejoice at seeing me alive. If, instead of her, Pani
Sniatynska had been staying with my aunt, she too would have been
terror-st