Then he asked whether, if he abandoned Marynia, he would not act dishonorably. Litka had united them. Something in his heart revolted at the very thought of opposing the will and sacrifice of that child. If he wished, however, to act against that will, should he have borne himself as he had? No. In such an event he ought not to have shown himself at the Plavitskis' since Litka's death, nor have seen Marynia, nor kissed her hand, nor let himself be borne away by the current which had borne him,--by the power of events, perhaps,--but borne him so far that to-day he would disappoint Marynia, and fall in her eyes to the wretched position of a man who knows not himself what he wishes. For he would have to be blind not to see that Marynia considers herself his betrothed; and that, if she were not disquieted by his silence so far, it was simply because she ascribed it to the mourning which both had in their hearts for Litka. "Looking, then," said Pan Stanislav, "from the side of reason and conservative instinct, from the side of sense and honor, I ought to marry her. Therefore what? Therefore I should be an imbecile if I hesitated, and did not consider the question as settled. It is settled." Then he drew breath, and began to walk through the room. Under the lamp lay Bukatski's letter. Pan Stanislav took it, and read from the place where his eyes fell by chance. "I beg thee, by all things, marry not. Remember that if thou marry, if thou have a son, if thou toil to leave him property, thou wilt do so only for this: that that son may be what I am." "Here is a nice quandary for thee," said Pan Stanislav, with a certain stubbornness. "I will marry. I will marry Marynia Plavitski; dost hear? I will gain property; and if I have a son, I will not make of him a decadent; dost understand?" And he was pleased with himself. A little later he looked at Litka, and felt that a sudden emotion seized him. A current of sorrow for her, and of feeling, rose with a new power in his heart. He began to converse with the child, as in important moments of life people speak usually with beloved dead,-- "Thou art pleased, kitten? Is it not true?" asked he. And she smiled at him from among the birches painted by Marynia; she seemed to blink at him, and to answer,-- "True, Pan Stas; true." That evening, before going to bed, he took back from the servant the note which was to be given to Marynia in the morning, and wrote another still more affectionate, and in the following words,--