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A BIOGRAPHY
201
usually in a future state only that they find each
other. Where could one find any more full-blown
romance 1 In this life these two souls which had met
could never be united, for circumstances had destroyed
the possibility for them of true union. Even if Sönya
had still been free, yet she had been married; and he
had consecrated himself to one who was in future to
be his only love.
Neither did Sonya feel it right to belong to any one
but her husband, for the bond winch united her to him
had not been entirely dissolved. They still wrote to
each other occasionally. There was a possibility of
their meeting again, and she was still fond of him in
the depths of her heart.
So the intercourse between her and the Pole was
only that of a responsive interchange of thought and
an abstract analyzing of feeling. They used to sit
opposite each other and talk on without stopping,
intoxicating themselves with the increasing stream of
words so characteristic of the Slavonic race. But in
the midst of their visionary fervor, Sönya was crushed
by a great misfortune.
Her husband had not been able to survive the
discovery that he had been shamefully cheated and had
ruined his family. This highly gifted scientist, so
simple and unostentatious, who had never desired the
delights which wealth can bestow, was the victim of
a swindle, in circumstances utterly opposed to his
character and the tendencies of his whole life.
The news of his death stretched Sönya on a sick-bed.
She lay for a long time suffering from a dangerous
nervous fever. She rose again broken in spirit, with
the feeling that an irremediable sorrow had drawn a
line across her life.
She reproached herself deeply for not having re-
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