" Pyotr Dmitritch mimicked her, not showing his
face. "It's sickening, Olga! Upon my honour, I am exhausted and not
up to it. . . . Let us do our quarrelling to-morrow."

"No, I understand you perfectly!" Olga Mihalovna went on. "You hate
me! Yes, yes! You hate me because I am richer than you! You will
never forgive me for that, and will always be lying to me!" ("Feminine
logic!" flashed through her mind again.) "You are laughing at me
now. . . . I am convinced, in fact, that you only married me in
order to have property qualifications and those wretched horses. . . .
Oh, I am miserable!"

Pyotr Dmitritch dropped the newspaper and got up. The unexpected
insult overwhelmed him. With a childishly helpless smile he looked
desperately at his wife, and holding out his hands to her as though
to ward off blows, he said imploringly:

"Olya!"

And expecting her to say something else awful, he leaned back in
his chair, and his huge figure seemed as helplessly childish as his
smile.

"Olya, how could you say it?" he whispered.

Olga Mihalovna came to herself. She was suddenly aware of her
passionate love for this man, remembered that he was her husband,
Pyotr Dmitritch, without whom she could not live for a day, and who
loved her passionately, too. She burst into loud sobs that sounded
strange and unlike her, and ran back to her bedroom.

She fell on the bed, and short hysterical sobs, choking her and
making her arms and legs twitch, filled the bedroom. Remembering
there was a visitor sleeping three or four rooms away, she buried
her head under the pillow to stifle her sobs, but the pillow rolled
on to the floor, and she almost fell on the floor herself when she
stooped to pick it up. She pulled the quilt up to her face, but her
hands would not obey her, but tore convulsively at everything she
clutched.

She thought that everything was lost, that the falsehood she had
told to wound her husband had shattered her life into fragments.
Her husband would not forgive her. The insult she had hurled at him
was not one that could be effaced by any caresses, by any vows. . . .
How could she convince her husband that she did not believe
what she had said?

"It's all over, it's all over!" she cried, not noticing that the
pillow had slipped on to the floor again. "For God's sake, for God's
sake!"

Probably roused by her cries, the guest and the servants were now
awake; next day all the neighbourhood would know that she had been