the scope and variety of her reading which sometimes struck me, or, for instance, the nun-like expression I had seen on her face the day before—­all that was unknown and incomprehensible to me.  When in my collisions with her I tried to define what sort of a person she was, my psychology went no farther than deciding that she was giddy, impractical, ill-tempered, guided by feminine logic; and it seemed to me that that was quite sufficient.  But now that she was crying I had a passionate desire to know more.

The weeping ceased.  I went up to my wife.  She sat up on the couch, and, with her head propped in both hands, looked fixedly and dreamily at the fire.

“I am going away tomorrow morning,” I said.

She said nothing.  I walked across the room, sighed, and said: 

“Natalie, when you begged me to go away, you said:  ’I will forgive you everything, everything’....  So you think I have wronged you.  I beg you calmly and in brief terms to formulate the wrong I’ve done you.”

“I am worn out.  Afterwards, some time...” said my wife.

“How am I to blame?” I went on.  “What have I done?  Tell me:  you are young and beautiful, you want to live, and I am nearly twice your age and hated by you, but is that my fault?  I didn’t marry you by force.  But if you want to live in freedom, go; I’ll give you your liberty.  You can go and love whom you please....  I will give you a divorce.”

“That’s not what I want,” she said.  “You know I used to love you and always thought of myself as older than you.  That’s all nonsense....  You are not to blame for being older or for my being younger, or that I might be able to love some one else if I were free; but because you are a difficult person, an egoist, and hate every one.”

“Perhaps so.  I don’t know,” I said.

“Please go away.  You want to go on at me till the morning, but I warn you I am quite worn out and cannot answer you.  You promised me to go to town.  I am very grateful; I ask nothing more.”

My wife wanted me to go away, but it was not easy for me to do that.  I was dispirited and I dreaded the big, cheerless, chill rooms that I was so weary of.  Sometimes when I had an ache or a pain as a child, I used to huddle up to my mother or my nurse, and when I hid my face in the warm folds of their dress, it seemed to me as though I were hiding from the pain.  And in the same way it seemed to me now that I could only hide from my uneasiness in this little room beside my wife.  I sat down and screened away the light from my eyes with my hand....  There was a stillness.