rich and luxuriant.  All this, though is banal to the point of vulgarity.  Before me stood an ordinary woman, perhaps neither beautiful nor elegant, but this was my wife with whom I had once lived, and with whom I should have been living to this day if it had not been for her unfortunate character; she was the one human being on the terrestrial globe whom I loved.  At this moment, just before going away, when I knew that I should no longer see her even through the window, she seemed to me fascinating even as she was, cold and forbidding, answering me with a proud and contemptuous mockery.  I was proud of her, and confessed to myself that to go away from her was terrible and impossible.

“Pavel Andreitch,” she said after a brief silence, “for two years we have not interfered with each other but have lived quietly.  Why do you suddenly feel it necessary to go back to the past?  Yesterday you came to insult and humiliate me,” she went on, raising her voice, and her face flushed and her eyes flamed with hatred; “but restrain yourself; do not do it, Pavel Andreitch!  Tomorrow I will send in a petition and they will give me a passport, and I will go away; I will go!  I will go!  I’ll go into a convent, into a widows’ home, into an almshouse....”

“Into a lunatic asylum!” I cried, not able to restrain myself.

“Well, even into a lunatic asylum!  That would be better, that would be better,” she cried, with flashing eyes.  “When I was in Pestrovo today I envied the sick and starving peasant women because they are not living with a man like you.  They are free and honest, while, thanks to you, I am a parasite, I am perishing in idleness, I eat your bread, I spend your money, and I repay you with my liberty and a fidelity which is of no use to any one.  Because you won’t give me a passport, I must respect your good name, though it doesn’t exist.”

I had to keep silent.  Clenching my teeth, I walked quickly into the drawing-room, but turned back at once and said: 

“I beg you earnestly that there should be no more assemblies, plots, and meetings of conspirators in my house!  I only admit to my house those with whom I am acquainted, and let all your crew find another place to do it if they want to take up philanthropy.  I can’t allow people at midnight in my house to be shouting hurrah at successfully exploiting an hysterical woman like you!”

My wife, pale and wringing her hands, took a rapid stride across the room, uttering a prolonged moan as though she had toothache.  With a wave of my hand, I went into the drawing-room.  I was choking with rage, and at the same time I was trembling with terror that I might not restrain myself, and that I might say or do something which I might regret all my life.  And I clenched my hands tight, hoping to hold myself in.

After drinking some water and recovering my calm a little, I went back to my wife.  She was standing in the same attitude as before, as though barring my approach to the table with the papers.  Tears were slowly trickling down her pale, cold face.  I paused then and said to her bitterly but without anger: