By means of this reasoning, he considers his relations with Martha to be all they should be; for he always endeavoured to spare her, and to preserve her high ideals, and her feelings of purity.
I could not help smiling as he said this, knowing as I did how little his intention had been realized.
But now he too seems to be tiring of the life he leads—this howling wilderness of a life. "These w^omen are so shallow, so mindless, so fatuous! Their own looseness of morals is the key-note which decides every one of their acts."
I could now shrewdly guess what his drift was.
"Take, for instance, Mme. Wildenhoff. She enjoys a change of—affections—once a month. That's her business: but why the devil does she bring in Philosophy and Sociology, and Emancipation? The thing she does is as old as the hills, and why trouble about her and women like her?"
I had long ago made the remark that men object to women who argue. On the other hand, they rate their souls very high indeed. Now, Witold confesses, it is the soul—the
