"Mashko, I was ready to recognize in thee cleverness, but I did not know thee to have enthusiasm." "What's to be done? I was in love with her, but now I am going to marry Panna Kraslavski." Mashko pronounced the last words, as if in anger, then followed a moment of silence. "Then thou wilt not be my groomsman?" "Give me time to consider." "In three days I am going away." "To what place?" "To St. Petersburg. I have business there; I will stay about two weeks." "I will give my answer on thy return." "Very well; to-day I will send thee the estimate of my oak in three sizes. To save the instalment!" "And the conditions on which I will buy it." Here Mashko took leave and went out. Pan Stanislav hastened to his office. After a conversation with Bigiel, he decided, if the affair should seem practicable and profitable, to buy the oak alone. He could not account to himself why he felt a certain wonderful desire to be connected with Kremen. After business hours he thought also of what Mashko had said of Panna Plavitski. He felt that the man had told the truth, and that, with a woman of this kind, life might be not only safe and peaceful, but full of charm; he noticed, however, that in those meditations he rendered justice rather to the type of which Marynia was a specimen, than to Marynia in person. He observed also in himself a thousand inconsistencies; he saw that he felt a certain repugnance, and even anger, at the thought of loving any one or anything, or letting his heart go into bonds and knots, usually fastened so firmly that they were painful. At the very thought of this he was enraged, and repeated in spirit, "I will not; I have had enough of this! It is an unwholesome exuberance, which leads people only to errors and suffering." At the same time he took it ill,--for example, that she did not love him with a certain exuberant and absolute love, and opened her heart to him only when duty commanded. Afterward, when he did not want love, he was astonished that it began to pall on him so easily, and that he desired Marynia far more when she was opposed, than now, when she was altogether inclined to him. "All leads to this at last," thought he: "that man himself does not know what he wants, or what he must hold to; that is his position. May a thunderbolt split it! Panna Plavitski has more good qualities than she herself suspects. She is dutiful, just, calm, attractive; my thoughts draw me toward her; and still I feel that Panna Plavitski is not for me what she once was, and that the devils have taken something that was in me. But what is it? As to the capacity for loving," continued Pan Stanislav, in his monologue, "I have come to the conclusion that loving is most frequently folly, and loving too much folly at all times; hence I should now be content, but I am not."