I told Sniatynski about my intention to have my Roman collections
conveyed to Warsaw,--calculating that it would reach the press, which
could not fail to laud me up to the sky as a public benefactor. Aniela
involuntarily must compare me to Kromitzki, which will count in my
favor. I sent also a telegram to Rome, asking for the Sassoferrato.
During breakfast I told Aniela, in presence of the others, that my
father had left the picture to her in his will; which confused her,
and she guessed at once that he had looked upon her as his future
daughter. It is true there was no name mentioned in the will, and for
that very reason I want Aniela to have it. The mention of this bequest
reawoke in us both a host of memories. I had done this on purpose to
turn Aniela's thoughts to the past, when she loved me and could love
me in peace. I know the remembrance must be mingled with some bitter
thoughts, even some resentment; it cannot be otherwise; but it would
be worse without the message I sent her through Sniatynski. This
message is the only extenuating circumstance in the whole guilty
affair. Aniela knows that I wanted to undo the wrong, that I loved her
then, suffered, and repented,--am repenting still, and that if we are
unhappy she too helped to bring that unhappiness on both. She is bound
to absolve me in her heart, regret the past and dream what the future
might have been but for my misdeeds and her severity. Even then I was
reading in her face that she felt frightened at her own thoughts
and visions, and tried to drive them away by a conversation upon
indifferent subjects. My aunt is so full of the approaching races
and the expected victory of Naughty Boy, who is put down for the
government stakes, that she cannot think of anything else. Aniela
thereupon began to talk about the races, and made some random remarks
and asked a few questions, until my aunt got scandalized and said:--
"My dear child, I see you have not the slightest notion about races."
I said to her with my eyes: "I know you want to stifle your feelings;"
and she understood me as if I had said it in so many words. And
indeed, I am quite certain that she is as much absorbed in our mutual
relation as I am. The thought of love independent of matrimony is
already planted in her soul; it is there, and does not leave her for
a moment. She must live with it, and get reconciled to it. In such a
case a woman, even if she had loved her husband, would turn from him.
A drop of water will hollow out a stone. If Aniela loves me ever so
little, if she only loves the past, she will be mine. I cannot think
of it calmly, because the foretaste of happiness is almost choking me.
There are here and there quicksands on the seashore, and the unwary
traveller who wanders there is lost. At times it seems to me that my
love is like one of those quicksands, and that I am dragging Aniela
into it; I myself am sinking, sinking--Let it be so--but together!