meanness, his selfishness, narrowness, and his miserable, worthless
nature. You must love her! Let her feel that she is not only your
female, but the crown of your head, as precious as your child and
friend; wear her close to your heart, let her feel the warmth of it,
and you may rest in peace; year after year she will cling closer to
you, until you two are like Siamese twins. If you do not give her all
that, you pervert her, estrange her by your worthlessness,--and she
will leave you. She will leave you as soon as she sees nobler hands
stretched out for her; she is forced to do it, as this warmth, this
appreciation, are as necessary to her life as the air she breathes."

He charged me with the chairback as with a battering ram. I retreated
before him until we had come close to the window; there he jumped up.

"How blind you are! In presence of such social drought, such utter
absence of general happiness as stamps our time, not to grasp this
felicity that is within reach! Shiver on the forum, and not light a
fire at home! Idiotism can go no farther! I tell you plainly, go and
get married."

He pointed through the window at Aniela, who with his wife was coming
back from the hot-houses, and added: "There is your happiness. There
it patters in fur boots on the frozen snow. Take her by weight of
gold, by weight in carats rather! You simply have no home, not only in
a physical sense, but in a moral, intellectual meaning; you have no
basis, no point of rest, and she will give you all that. But do not
philosophize her away as you have philosophized away your abilities
and your thirty-five years of life!"

He could not have told me anything better, nobler, or what chimed in