his youth and his career, spending the last of his money
on a summer villa, abandoning his mother and sisters, and, worst
of all, wearing himself out in an agonizing struggle with himself.
From mere common humanity he ought to be treated seriously.

She recognized all this clearly till it made her heart ache, and
if at that moment she had gone up to him and said to him, "No,"
there would have been a force in her voice hard to disobey. But she
did not go up to him and did not speak--indeed, never thought of
doing so. The pettiness and egoism of youth had never been more
patent in her than that evening. She realized that Ilyin was unhappy,
and that he was sitting on the sofa as though he were on hot coals;
she felt sorry for him, but at the same time the presence of a man
who loved her to distraction, filled her soul with triumph and a
sense of her own power. She felt her youth, her beauty, and her
unassailable virtue, and, since she had decided to go away, gave
herself full licence for that evening. She flirted, laughed
incessantly, sang with peculiar feeling and gusto. Everything
delighted and amused her. She was amused at the memory of what had
happened at the seat in the wood, of the sentinel who had looked
on. She was amused by her guests, by Ilyin's cutting jests, by the
pin in his cravat, which she had never noticed before. There was a
red snake with diamond eyes on the pin; this snake struck her as
so amusing that she could have kissed it on the spot.

Sofya Petrovna sang nervously, with defiant recklessness as though
half intoxicated, and she chose sad, mournful songs which dealt
with wasted hopes, the past, old age, as though in mockery of
another's grief. "'And old age comes nearer and nearer' . . ." she
sang. And what was old age to her?

"It seems as though there is something going wrong with me," she
thought from time to time through her laughter and singing.

The party broke up at twelve o'clock. Ilyin was the last to leave.
Sofya Petrovna was still reckless enough to accompany him to the
bottom step of the verandah. She wanted to tell him that she was
going away with her husband, and to watch the effect this news would
produce on him.

The moon was hidden behind the clouds, but it was light enough for
Sofya Petrovna to see how the wind played with the skirts of his
overcoat and with the awning of the verandah. She could see, too,
how white Ilyin was, and how he twisted his upper lip in the effort
t