LITMIR.BIZ

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the result of a healthy digestion. But that joyful smile at once brought everything back to his mind, and he grew thoughtful.

      Then he heard the sound of two childish voices outside the door, and recognized them as the voices of his eldest daughter, Tanya, and of his little boy Grisha. They were dragging something along, and had upset it.

      ‘I told you not to put passengers on the roof,’ the girl shouted in English. ‘Now pick them up!’

      ‘Everything is disorganized,’ thought Oblonsky; ‘here are the children running wild — ’ and going to the door he called them in. They left the box, which represented a train, and came to their father.

      The girl, her father’s pet, ran boldly in, embraced him, and hung laughing on his neck, pleased, as she always was, to smell the familiar scent of his whiskers. Having kissed his face, flushed by stooping and lit up by tenderness, the girl unclasped her hands and was going to run away, but he held her back.

      ‘How’s Mama?’ he asked, passing his hand over his daughter’s smooth delicate little neck, as he smilingly said ‘Good morning’ in answer to the little boy’s greeting.

      He was conscious of not caring as much for the boy as for the girl but did his best to treat them both alike. The boy felt this and did not respond to his father’s cold smile.

      ‘Mama? She’s up,’ said the girl.

      Oblonsky sighed.

      ‘That means that she has again not slept all night,’ he thought.

      ‘Yes, but is she cheerful?’ he added.

      The girl knew that her father and mother had quarrelled, and that her mother could not be cheerful, and also that her father must know this, so that his putting the question to her so lightly was all pretence, and she blushed for him. He noticed this and blushed too.

      ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘She said we were not to have any lessons, but must walk with Miss Hull to Grandmamma’s.’

      ‘Well, you may go, my little Tanyakin… . Oh, wait!’ he said, still holding her and stroking her delicate little hand.

      Taking a box of sweets from the mantelpiece where he had put it the day before, he chose two sweets which he knew she liked best, a chocolate and a coloured cream.

      ‘For Grisha?’ she asked, holding out the chocolate.

      ‘Yes, yes,’ and stroking her shoulder he kissed her hair at the roots and her neck, and let her go.

      ‘The carriage is ready,’ said Matthew, ‘and there is a woman on business waiting for you.’

      ‘Been here long?’

      ‘About half an hour.’

      ‘How often must I tell you to let me know at once when anyone is here?’

      ‘But I must give you time to finish your coffee,’ answered Matthew in his friendly rude tone, with which it was impossible to be angry.

      ‘Well ask her in at once,’ said Oblonsky, his face wrinkling with vexation.

      The woman, widow of a petty official named Kalinin, was petitioning for something impossible and absurd, but nevertheless Oblonsky with his usual politeness asked her to sit down and heard her attentively to the end, gave her full instructions how and to whom to apply and even wrote briskly and fluently in his large, graceful and legible hand a little note to a personage who might be of use to her. Having dismissed her, he took his hat and paused to consider whether he had forgotten anything. He found he had forgotten nothing but what he wanted to forget: his wife.

      ‘Oh yes!’ His head dropped, and his handsome face became worried.

      ‘To go, or not to go?’ he asked himself; and his inner consciousness answered that he ought not to go: that it could only result in hypocrisy; that it was impossible to restore their relations because it was impossible to render her attractive and capable of exciting love, or to turn him into an old man incapable of love. Nothing except hypocrisy and falsehood could now result — and these were repugnant to his nature.

      ‘Nevertheless it will have to be done sooner or later. After all, things can’t remain as they are,’ he said, trying to brace himself. He expanded his chest, took out a cigarette, lit it, took two whiffs, then threw it into a pearl-shell ash-tray, and crossing the drawing-room with rapid steps, he opened the door which led into his wife’s bedroom.

      Chapter 4

      DARYA ALEXANDROVNA was there in a dressing-jacket, with her large frightened eyes, made more prominent by the emaciation of her face, and her knot of thin plaits of once luxurious and beautiful hair. The room was covered with scattered articles, and she was standing among them before an open wardrobe, where she was engaged in selecting something. Hearing her husband’s step she stopped and looked at the door, vainly trying to assume a severe and contemptuous expression. She felt that she was afraid of him and afraid of the impending interview. She was trying to do what she had attempted ten times already during those three days, to sort out her own and her children’s clothes to take to her mother’s; but she could not bring herself to do it, and said again, as she had done after each previous attempt, that things could not remain as they were — that she must do something to punish and humiliate him, and to revenge herself if only for a small part of the pain he had caused her. She still kept saying that she would leave him, but felt that this was impossible. It was impossible because she could not get out of the habit of regarding him as her husband and of loving him. Besides, she felt that if here, in her own home, it was all she could do to look after her five children properly, it would be still worse where she meant to take them. As it was, during these three days the youngest had fallen ill because they had given him sour broth, and the others had had hardly any dinner yesterday. She felt that it was impossible for her to leave; but still deceiving herself, she went on sorting the things and pretending that she really would go.

      On seeing her husband she thrust her arms into a drawer of the wardrobe as if looking for something, and only when he had come close to her did she turn her face toward him. But her face, which she wanted to seem stern and determined, expressed only perplexity and suffering.

      ‘Dolly!’ he said in a soft, timid voice. He drew his head down, wishing to look pathetic and submissive, but all the same he shone with freshness and health. With a rapid glance she took in his fresh and healthy figure from head to foot. ‘Yes, he is happy and contented,’ she thought, ‘but what about me? … And that horrid good-nature of his which people love and praise so, how I hate it!’ She pressed her lips together and a cheek-muscle twitched on the right side of her pale and nervous face.

      ‘What do you want?’ she said quickly in a voice unlike her usual deep tones.

      ‘Dolly,’ he repeated unsteadily, ‘Anna is coming to-day.’

      ‘What’s that to do with me? I can’t receive her!’ she exclaimed.

      ‘But after all, Dolly, you really must,’ said he.

      ‘Go away, go away, go away!’ she cried, as if in physical pain, without looking at him.

      Oblonsky could think calmly of his wife, could hope that ‘things would shape themselves’ as Matthew had said, and could calmly read his paper and drink his coffee, but when he saw her worn, suffering face, and heard her tone, resigned and despairing, he felt a choking sensation. A lump rose to his throat and tears glistened in his eyes.

      ‘Oh, my God! What have I done? Dolly — for heaven’s sake! … You know …’ He could not continue. His throat was choked with sobs.

      She slammed the doors of the wardrobe and looked up at him.

      ‘Dolly, what can I say? … Only forgive me! Think, nine years… . Can’t they atone for a momentary — a momentary …’

      Her eyes drooped and she waited to hear what he would say, as if entreating him to persuade her somehow that she had

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