There lurks somewhere in a corner of my heart
a certain satisfaction at his ruin,--if only for the reason that these
two will be now entirely dependent on us; that is, upon my aunt, who
is the administrator of the Ploszow estate, and myself. In the mean
while I do not intend to reply at all. If I changed my intention
it would be to send him my congratulation at the expected family
increase. Later on it will be different. I will secure their future;
they shall have enough to live upon and more.

23 October.

Clara has not arrived, and up to this moment there is no answer. This
is the more strange as she used to write every day, inquiring after my
health. Her silence would not surprise me if I thought she wanted even
ten minutes to make up her mind. I shall wait patiently; but it would
be better if she did not put it off. I feel that if I had not sent off
that letter, I should send now another like it; but if I could take it
back I should probably do so.

24 October.

This is what Clara writes:--

Dear Monsieur Leon,--Upon receiving your letter I felt so foolishly
happy that I wanted to start for Berlin at once. But it is because I
love you sincerely that I listened to the voice which said to me that
the greatest love ought not to be the greatest egoism, and that I had
no right to sacrifice you for myself.

You do not love me, Monsieur Leon. I would give my life were it
otherwise; but you do not love me. Your letter has been written in a
moment of impulse and despair. From the first instant of meeting you
in Berlin I noticed that you were neither well in body nor easy in
your mind, and it troubled me; the best proof of this is that although
you had wished me good-by, I sent every day to the hotel inquiring
whether you had gone, until I was told you were ill. Afterwards,
nursing you in your illness, I became convinced that my second fear
had been also right, and that you had some hidden sorrow, one of those
painful disappointments, after which it is difficult to be reconciled
to life.

Now I have a conviction--and God knows how heavily it weighs upon
my heart--that you want to bind your life to mine in order to drown
certain memories, to forget and put a barrier between you and the
past. In the face of that is it possible that I could agree to what
you ask? In refusing your hand, the worst that can happen to me is
that I shall feel very unhappy, but I shall not have to reproach
myself with having become a bur