I, forgetting all precautions, looked steadily at her, but she did not lift her eyes; which convinced me all the more that I was the cause of this sudden resolve. I cannot find words to express what I felt at that moment, and what deadly bitterness suffused my heart. Aniela knows perfectly that I live for her only, exist through her; that all my thoughts belong to her, my actions have only her in view; that she is to me an issue of life and death; and in spite of all that she calmly decides to go away. Whether I should perish or beat my head against the wall, she never so much as considered. She will be more at ease when she ceases to see me writhing like a beetle stuck on a pin; she will be no longer afraid of my kissing her feet furtively, or startling that virtuous conscience. How can she hesitate when such excellent peace can be got, at so small a price as cutting somebody's throat! Thoughts like these spun across my brain by thousands. I felt a bitter taste in my mouth. "You are virtuous," I said inwardly to Aniela, "because you have no heart. If a dog attached himself to you as I am attached, something would be due to him. You have never shown me any indulgence, or any spark of pity; you have never confessed to me any tender feeling, and you have taken from me what you could. If you were able, you would deprive me of your presence altogether,--although you had the certainty that if I could not see you my eyes would perish forever. But I begin to understand you now, begin to see that your inflexibility is so great because your heart is so small. You are cold and unfeeling, and your virtue is nothing but an enormous egoism, that wants above everything to be left undisturbed, and for that peace is capable of sacrificing all else." During the whole time of breakfast I did not say a word. When alone in my own room I held my head with both hands and with a weary, over-wrought brain, began to think again of what had happened. My thoughts were still very bitter. Women of narrow hearts often remain unyielding through a certain philistinism of virtue. The first thing with them is to keep their accounts in order, like any tradesman. They fear love, as the grocer fears street-risings, war, riots, exalted ideas, and audacious flights of fancy. Peace at any price, because peace is good for business. Everything that rises above the rational and commonplace standard of life is bad, and deserves the contempt of reasonable beings. Virtue has its heights and precipices, but also its level plains.