For a week I had been thinking what to choose for her reading. I did not wish to neglect anything, though I did not attach undue weight to this, as it acts very slowly. Besides, I have noticed that to our women, though their imagination is more developed than their temperament, a book is always something unreal. If it falls even into the hands of an exceptionally susceptible person, it creates in her at the most an abstract world, that has no connection with real life whatever. To almost none of them it occurs that ideas taken from books can be applied to any practical purpose. I am convinced that if a great writer tried to prove, for instance, that purity of thought and mind were not only superfluous in a woman, but even blameworthy from a moral point of view,--Aniela would opine that the principle might apply to the whole world with the exception of herself. The utmost I can hope for is that the reading of appropriate books will render her familiar with a certain kind of broad views and thoughts. That is all I wish for. Loving her from my whole soul, I want her to respond to that love, and do not neglect any means towards that end. I, who never deceive myself, confess openly that I want Aniela to sacrifice for me her husband, but I do not want to corrupt her or to soil her purity. Let nobody tell me that this is a sophism, and that the one includes the other. The tormenting devil that is always within me raising difficulties says: "You create new theories; the way of faithlessness _is_ the way of corruption." How these conflicting thoughts tear me to pieces! I reply to the familiar spirit: "I might doubt opposite theories quite as much; I contrive what I can in defence of my love,--it is my natural law." And there is a greater law still, the law of love. Some feelings are mean and commonplace, others lofty and full of nobility. A woman that follows the call of lofty feeling does not lose the nobility of her soul. Such a great, exceptional love I try to awake in Aniela, and therefore I may say conscientiously that I do not want to corrupt her. Besides, these inward arguments do not lead to anything. Even if I had not the slightest doubt that I am doing wrong, if I were unable to give any conclusive answer to the tormenting spirit, I would not cease loving; and always following where a greater power leads me, I should go according to my feeling, and not according to abstract reasoning.