574 575
He did not sleep the whole night, and his fury, growing in a sort of
vast, arithmetical progression, reached its highest limits in the morning.
He dressed in haste, and as though carrying his cup full of wrath, and
fearing to spill any over, fearing to lose with his wrath the energy nec-
essary for the interview with his wife, he went into her room directly he
heard she was up.
Anna, who had thought she knew her husband so well, was amazed
at his appearance when he went in to her. His brow was lowering, and
his eyes stared darkly before him, avoiding her eyes; his mouth was
tightly and contemptuously shut. In his walk, in his gestures, in the
sound of his voice there was a determination and firmness such as his
wife had never seen in him. He went into her room, and without
greeting her, walked straight up to her writing-table, and taking her
keys, opened a drawer.
“What do you want?” she cried.
“Your lover’s letters,” he said.
“They’re not here,” she said, shutting the drawer; but from that
action he saw he had guessed right, and roughly pushing away her
hand, he quickly snatched a portfolio in which he knew she used to put
her most important papers. She tried to pull the portfolio away, but he
pushed her back.
“Sit down! I have to speak to you,” he said, putting the portfolio
under his arm, and squeezing it so tightly with his elbow that his
shoulder stood up. Amazed and intimidated, she gazed at him in
silence.
“I told you that I would not allow you to receive your lover in this
house.”
“I had to see him to...”
She stopped, not finding a reason.
“I do not enter into the details of why a woman wants to see her
lover.”
“I meant, I only...” she said, flushing hotly. This coarseness of his
angered her, and gave her courage. “Surely you must feel how easy it is
for you to insult me?” she said.
“An honest man and an honest woman may be insulted, but to tell
a thief he’s a thief is simply la constatation d’un fait.”
“This cruelty is something new I did not know in you.”
“You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife liberty, giving her
the honorable protection of his name, simply on the condition of ob-
serving the proprieties: is that cruelty?”
“It’s worse than cruel—it’s base, if you want to know!” Anna cried,
in a rush of hatred, and getting up, she was going away.
“No!” he shrieked in his shrill voice, which pitched a note higher
than usual even, and his big hands clutching her by the arm so vio-
lently that red marks were left from the bracelet he was squeezing, he
forcibly sat her down in her place.
“Base! If you care to use that word, what is base is to forsake
husband and child for a lover, while you eat your husband’s bread!”
She bowed her head. She did not say what she had said the
evening before to her lover, that HE was her husband, and her hus-
band was superfluous; she did not even think that. She felt all the
justice of his words, and only said softly:
“You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be
myself; but what are you saying all this for?”
“What am I saying it for? what for?” he went on, as angrily. “That
you may know that since you have not carried out my wishes in regard
to observing outward decorum, I will take measures to put an end to
this state of things.”