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joints crack.
“Oh, please, don’t do that, I do so dislike it,” she said.
“Anna, is this you?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, quietly making an
effort over himself, and restraining the motion of his fingers.
“But what is it all about?” she said, with such genuine and droll
wonder. “What do you want of me?”
Alexey Alexandrovitch paused, and rubbed his forehead and his
eyes. He saw that instead of doing as he had intended—that is to say,
warning his wife against a mistake in the eyes of the world—he had
unconsciously become agitated over what was the affair of her con-
science, and was struggling against the barrier he fancied between
them.
“This is what I meant to say to you,” he went on coldly and com-
posedly, “and I beg you to listen to it. I consider jealousy, as you know,
a humiliating and degrading feeling, and I shall never allow myself to
be influenced by it; but there are certain rules of decorum which can-
not be disregarded with impunity. This evening it was not I observed
it, but judging by the impression made on the company, everyone
observed that your conduct and deportment were not altogether what
could be desired.”
“I positively don’t understand,” said Anna, shrugging her shoul-
ders—”He doesn’t care,” she thought. “But other people noticed it,
and that’s what upsets him.”—”You’re not well, Alexey Alexandrovitch,”
she added, and she got up, and would have gone towards the door; but
he moved forward as though he would stop her.
His face was ugly and forbidding, as Anna had never seen him.
She stopped, and bending her head back and on one side, began with
her rapid hand taking out her hairpins.
“Well, I’m listening to what’s to come,” she said, calmly and ironi-
cally; “and indeed I listened with interest, for I should like to under-
stand what’s the matter.”
She spoke, and marveled at the confident, calm, and natural tone in
which she was speaking, and the choice of the words she used.
“To enter into all the details of your feelings I have no right, and
besides, I regard that as useless and even harmful,” began Alexey
Alexandrovitch. “Ferreting in one’s soul, one often ferrets out some-
thing that might have lain there unnoticed. Your feelings are an affair
of your own conscience; but I am in duty bound to you, to myself, and
to God, to point out to you your duties. Our life has been joined, not by
man, but by God. That union can only be severed by a crime, and a
crime of that nature brings its own chastisement.”
“I don’t understand a word. And, oh dear! how sleepy I am, un-
luckily,” she said, rapidly passing her hand through her hair, feeling for
the remaining hairpins.
“Anna, for God’s sake don’t speak like that!” he said gently. “Per-
haps I am mistaken, but believe me, what I say, I say as much for
myself as for you. I am your husband, and I love you.”
For an instant her face fell, and the mocking gleam in her eyes died
away; but the word love threw her into revolt again. She thought:
“Love? Can he love? If he hadn’t heard there was such a thing as love,
he would never have used the word. He doesn’t even know what love
is.”
“Alexey Alexandrovitch, really I don’t understand,” she said. De-
fine what it is you find...”
“Pardon, let me say all I have to say. I love you. But I am not
speaking of myself; the most important persons in this matter are our
son and yourself. It may very well be, I repeat, that my words seem to
you utterly unnecessary and out of place; it may be that they are called