Besides, I should not have fled had it not been necessary for the
future weal of my love. Now, every day when she rises and says her
prayers, walks in the park or attends her sick mother, she must, if
ever so unwillingly, say to herself, "He loves me," and the thought
will gradually become familiar, less terrifying to her. Human nature
gets accustomed to everything, and a woman soon becomes reconciled to
the thought that she is loved, especially when she returns that love.
This question, "Does she love me?" I put to myself the first time when
I knew I loved her still; and again I turn it over in my mind, try to
weigh all the circumstances as if somebody else's fate were at stake,
and I arrive at the conviction that it cannot be otherwise. When she
married she loved me, not Kromitzki; she only yielded to him her hand
driven by despair. If she had married a superior man who dazzled her
by his fame, his thoughts, or exceptional character, she might have
forgotten me. But how could a Kromitzki, with his money-grubbing
neurosis, get hold of her affection? Besides, he left her soon after
they were married; he sold Gluchow, which was as the very apple of the
eye to these two women. Judging Kromitzki quite impartially, there
was nothing in him which could win a being full of ideal impulses and
feelings. Then I came back,--I, whom she had loved.
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