I have been to Ploszow, and found things very different indeed from what I had pictured to myself. I left Warsaw at seven in the morning in a cab, counting I should be in Ploszow by eight. The oppressive feeling still remained with me. I had said to myself that I would not make any plans about that first meeting, or my future bearing towards her. Let chance be my guide. But I could not help speculating how it would be,--how she would greet me, what she would try to make me understand, and what our future relation to each other would be. Not having formed any plans of my own, I fancied, I do not know why that she would want to act according to a well-defined system. Trying to fathom this, I felt almost inimical towards her. Then again, at the thought that the meeting might cause her pain, I felt something akin to pity, and seemed to see her before me as she used to be. I saw distinctly the low brow with the wealth of auburn hair, the long eyelashes, and the small, delicate face. I tried to guess how she would be dressed. Memories came back of words she had said, expressions of the face, graceful motions, dresses. With strange pertinacity, the one memory remained with me,--her coming into the room after she had tried to disguise her emotion by applying powder to her face. At last these memories became so vivid as to equal a second-sight. "There she is again," I said to myself; and in order to pull myself together, I began talking to the driver, and asked him whether he were married; whereupon he replied that without the old woman at home, there would be no go, then said something I did not hear, as I had caught sight of the Ploszow poplars in the distance. I had not paid any heed to the time we had been on the road. At the sight of Ploszow I felt more troubled still, and my eagerness increased. I tried to pay attention to outward things, changes that had taken place during my absence, and look at the new buildings on the road. I repeated to myself mechanically that the weather was very fine, and the spring exceptionally early this year. And indeed, the weather was magnificent; the morning air was crisp and transparent; near the cottages the apple-trees, in full bloom, were scattering their petals like snowflakes on the grass; it was like a long line of pictures by the modern school of painters. Wherever the eye turned, there was that luminous _plein-air_ in the midst of which moved the figures of people working in the fields or near their cottages. I saw it all, observed every detail; but, strange to say, I was not able to take it in, or give myself up to it altogether. The impressions had lost their absorbing power, and remained only on the surface of the brain, the brain itself being full of other thoughts. In this state of divided attention I approached Ploszow.