A while after his departure, Pan Stanislav said,—
“He is right. How happy I should be, for example, if I had not become attached to that child and Pani Emilia! In this respect we are incurable, and we spoil our lives voluntarily. He is right. In this country one is always loving some person or something; it is an inherited disease. Eternal romanticism, eternal sentimentalism,—and eternally pins in the heart.”
“Old Plavitski bows to thee,” said Bigiel. “That man loves nobody but himself.”
“In reality, this is perhaps true; but he lacks the courage to tell himself that that is permissible and necessary. Nay, what is more, he is convinced that it is needful to act otherwise; and through this he is in continual slavery. Here, though a man have a nature like Plavitski’s, he must feign even to himself that he loves some one or something.”
“But will you visit Pani Emilia to-day?” asked Bigiel.
“Of course! If I were to say, for example, ‘I have the malaria,’ I should not cure myself by saying so.”
And, in fact, not only was he at Pani Emilia’s that day, but he was there twice; for at his first visit he did not find the ladies at home. To the question where his daughter was, Plavitski answered, with due pathos and resignation, “I have no daughter now.” Pan Stanislav, not wishing to tell him fables, for which he felt a sudden desire, went away, and returned only in the evening.
This time Marynia herself received him, and informed him that Pani Emilia had slept for the first time since Litka’s funeral. While saying this, she left her hand a certain time in his. Pan Stanislav, in spite of all the disorder in which his thoughts were, could not avoid noticing this; and, when he looked at last with an inquiring glance into her eyes, he discovered that the young lady’s cheeks flushed deeply. They sat down, and began to converse.
“We were at Povanzki,” said Marynia, “and I promised Emilia to go there with her every day.”
“But is it well for her to remember the child so every day, and open her wounds?”