"Her gaze, the elegant, exquisite hand she gave me, her simple dress, the way she did her hair, her voice, her gait, always produced the same impression on me of something new and extraordinary, and very significant. We would talk together for hours, there would be long silences, while we were each thinking our own thoughts, or she would play to me for hours on the piano. If I found no one in, I stayed and waited, chatted with the nurse, played with the child, or lay on the couch in the study and read a newspaper; and when Anna Alexeye- vna came back I met her in the hall, took all her parcels from her, and for some reason I carried those parcels every time with as much love, as much solemnity, as if I were a boy.
" 'The old woman had it easy,' the proverb runs, 'so she bought a pig.' The Luganoviches had it easy, so they made friends with me. If I was long in coming to the town, I must be ill, or something must have hap- pened to me, and both of them would be very anxious. They were distressed that I, an educated man with a knowledge of languages, instead of devoting myself to scholarship or literary work, should live in the country, rush around like a squirrel in a cage, work hard and yet always be penniless. They imagined that I was un- happy, and that I only talked, laughed, and ate to con- ceal my sufferings, and even at cheerful moments when I was quite at ease I was aware of their searching eyes fixed upon me. They were particularly touching when I was really in trouble, when I was being hard pressed by some creditor and was unable to meet a payment on time. The two of them, husband and wife, would whis- per together at the window; then he would come over to me and say with a grave face:
" 'If you are in need of money at the moment, Pavel Konstantinovich, my wife and I beg you not to stand on ceremony, but borrow from us.'
"And in his agitation his ears would turn red. Or again, after whispering in the same way at the window, he would come up to me, his ears red, and say, 'My wife and I earnestly beg you to accept this present from us.'
"And he would hand me studs, a cigarette case, or a lamp, and I would send them fowls, butter, and flowers from the farm. Both of them, by the way, were very well off. In the early days I often borrowed money, and was not very choosy about it—borrowed wherever I could—but nothing in the world would have induced me to borrow from the Luganoviches. But why mention the matter?
'1 was unhappy. At home, in the fields, in the shed, I kept thinking of her. I tried to understand the mystery of a beautiful, intelligent young woman marrying some- one so uninteresting, almost an old man (her husband was over forty), and having children by him; I tried to fathom the mystery of this dull, kindly, simple-hearted man, who reasoned with such tiresome good sense, who at evening parties and balls kept near the more sub- stantial people, looking listless and superfluous, with a submissive, apathetic expression, as though he had been brought there for sale, who yet believed in his right to be happy, to have children by her; and I kept trying to understand why she had met just him first and not me, and why such a terrible mistake need have happened in our lives.
"And every time I came to the town I saw from her eyes that she had been expecting me, and she would teU me herself that she had had a peculiar feeling all that day and had guessed that I would come. We would talk a long time, and then we would be silent, yet we did not confess our love to each other, but timidly and jealously concealed it. We were afraid of everything that would reveal our secret to ourselves. I loved her tenderly, deeply, but I reflected and kept asking myself what our love could lead to if we did not have the strength to fight against it. It seemed incredible to me that my gentle, sad love could all at once rudely break up the even course of the life of her husband, her children, and the whole household in which I was so loved and trusted. Would it be honorable? She would follow me, but where? Where could I take her? It would have been different if I had led a beautiful, interesting life—if I had been fighting for the liberation of my country, for instance, or had been a celebrated scholar, an actor, or a painter; but as things were it would mean taking her from one humdrum life to another as humdrum or per- haps more so. And how long would our happiness last? What would happen to her if I fell ill, if I died, or if we simply stopped loving each other?
"And she apparently reasoned the same way. She thought of her husband, her children, and of her mother, who loved her son-in-law like a son. If she yielded to her feeling she would have to lie, or else to tell the truth, and in her position either would have been equally in- convenient and terrible. And she was tormented by the question whether her love would bring me happiness— whether she would not complicate my life, which as it was she believed to be hard enough and full of all sorts of trouble. It seemed to her that she was not young enough for me, that she was not industrious or energetic enough to begin a new life, and she often said to her husband that I ought to marry a girl of intelligence and worth who would be a good housewife and a helpmate —and she would add at once that such a girl was not likely to be found in the whole town.
"Meanwhile the years were passing. Anna Alexeyevna already had two children. Whenever I arrived at the Luganoviches' the servants smiled cordially, the children shouted that Uncle Pavel Konstantinovich had come, and hung on my neck; everyone was happy. They did not understand what was going on within me, and thought that I too was happy. Everyone regarded me as a noble fellow. Both grown-ups and children felt that a noble fellow was walking about the room, and that gave a peculiar charm to their relations with me, as though in my presence their life, too, was purer and more beau» tiful. Anna Alexeyevna and I used to go to the t'ieater together, always on foot. We used to sit side bj side, our shoulders touching; I would take the opera glass from her hands without a word, and feel at that mo- ment that she was close to me, that she was mine, that we could not live without each other. But by some strange misunderstanding, when we came out of the theater we always said good-by and parted like stran- gers. Goodness knows what people were saying about
us in the town already, but there was not a word of truth
in it all.
"Latterly Anna Alexeyevna took to going away fre- quently to stay with her mother or her sister; she began to be moody, she was coming to recognize that her life was without satisfaction, was ruined, and at such times she did not care to see her husband or her children. She was already being treated for nervous prostration.
"We continued to say nothing, and in the presence of strangers she displayed an odd irritation with me; no matter what I said she disagreed with me, and if I had an argument she sided with my opponent. If I dropped something, she would say coldly:
" 'I congratulate you.'
"If I forgot to take the opera glass when we were go- ing to the theater she would say afterwards:
" 'I knew you would forget.'
"Luckily or not, there is nothing in our lives that does not come to an end sooner or later. The time came when we had to part, as Luganovich received an appointment in one of the western provinces. They had to sell their furniture, their horses, their summer villa. When we drove out to the villa and afterwards, as we were going away, looked back to see the garden and the green roof for the last time, everyone was sad, and I realized that the time had come to say good-by not only to the villa. It was arranged that at the end of August we should see Anna Alexeyevna off to the Crimea, where the doctors were sending her, and that a little later Luganovich and the children would set off for the western province.
"A great crowd had collected to see Anna Alexeyevna off. When she had said good-by to her husband and children and there was only a minute left before the third bell, I ran into her compartment to place on the rack a basket that she had almost forgotten, and then I had to say good-by. When our eyes met right there in the compartment our spiritual strength deserted us both, I took her in my arms, she pressed her face to my breast, and tears flowed from her eyes. Kissing her face, her shoulders, her hands wet with tears—oh, how miserable we were!—I confessed my love to her, and with a burn- ing pain in my heart I realized how needless and petty and deceptive was all that had hindered us from loving each other. I realized that when you love you must either, in your reasoning about that love, start from what is higher, more important than happiness or unhappi- ness, sin or virtue in their usual meaning, or you must not reason at all.