e was oppressed by my presence, and this aroused in me
jealousy, annoyance, and an obstinate desire to wound her. "Wife, these
snug rooms, the place by the fire," I thought, "are mine, have been mine
for years, but some crazy Ivan Ivanitch or Sobol has for some reason
more right to them than I. Now I see my wife, not out of window, but
close at hand, in ordinary home surroundings that I feel the want of now
I am growing older, and, in spite of her hatred for me, I miss her as
years ago in my childhood I used to miss my mother and my nurse. And
I feel that now, on the verge of old age, my love for her is purer and
loftier than it was in the past; and that is why I want to go up to her,
to stamp hard on her toe with my heel, to hurt her and smile as I do
it."

"Monsieur Marten," I said, addressing the doctor, "how many hospitals
have we in the district?"

"Sobol," my wife corrected.

"Two," answered Sobol.

"And how many deaths are there every year in each hospital?"

"Pavel Andreitch, I want to speak to you," said my wife.

She apologized to the visitors and went to the next room. I got up and
followed her.

"You will go upstairs to your own rooms this minute," she said.

"You are ill-bred," I said to her.

"You will go upstairs to your own rooms this very minute," she repeated
sharply, and she looked into my face with hatred.

She was standing so near that if I had stooped a little my beard would
have touched her face.

"What is the matter?" I asked. "What harm have I done all at once?"

Her chin quivered, she hastily wiped her eyes, and, with a cursory
glance at the looking-glass, whispered:

"The old story is beginning all over again. Of course you won't go away.
Well, do as you like. I'll go away myself, and you stay."

We returned to the drawing-room, she with a resolute face, while
I shrugged my shoulders and tried to smile. There were some more
visitors--an elderly lady and a young man in spectacles. Without
greeting the new arrivals or taking leave of the others, I went off to
my own rooms.

After what had happened at tea and then again downstairs, it became
clear to me that our "family happiness," which we had begun to forget
about in the course of the last two years, was through some absurd and
trivial reason beginning all over again, and that neither I nor my
wife could now stop ourselves; and that next day or the day after, the
outburst of hatred would, as I knew by experience of past years