conscious of keeping up
appearances. Why? I do not know, as this did not matter now to me any
longer. Most likely it was an instinctive action of the brain, which
for months had been trained in concealing the truth and keeping up
appearances. I told Pani Celina that I had seen a doctor, and that he
said there was something amiss with my heart, and ordered me to go to
Berlin without delay,--and she believed it.

Not so Aniela. I saw her eyes dilated with terror, and in her face the
expression of a degraded martyr; and there were two persons within me:
one who said, "Is it her fault?" and another who despised her. Oh, why
did I love her so much?

12 September.

It is almost two weeks since I left. They must be at Ploszow by this
time. I wrote to-day a letter to my aunt, because I was afraid
she might be uneasy about me and come here to look after me. I am
sometimes astonished to find there is still somebody that cares what
becomes of me.

13 September.

There are men who lead astray other men's wives, deceive them, and
afterwards throw them aside and quietly resume their every-day life.
I have never done any such thing, and if Aniela had been my victim I
should have wiped the dust from off her path; no human power could
have torn me from her. There are greater crimes than mine, but upon
me has fallen such a burden that it gives me the impression of an
exceptional punishment; and I cannot help thinking that my love must
have been a terrible crime.

This is a kind of instinctive fear, against which scepticism is no
safeguard. And yet by all moral laws it must be admitted that it would
be a greater offence to lead a woman to ruin without love, and do from
calculation what I did from a deep love. Surely the responsibility
cannot be greater for an immense, overpowering feeling than for a mean
little weakness.

No! therefore my love is, above all, an awful calamity. A man free
from prejudices can imagine how he would feel if he were swayed by
prejudice; so, too, a man who doubts may imagine how he could pray if
he had the faith. I not only have the feeling, but it breaks forth
into a complaint, almost like a sincere prayer, and I say: "If I am
guilty, O God! I have been punished severely, and a little mercy might
be shown to me." But I cannot even imagine in what shape that mercy
could come to me now! It is impossible!

14 September.

They must have gone back to Ploszow by this time. I still think of
Aniela