g about
us in the town already, but there was not a word of truth in it all!

"In the latter years Anna Alexyevna took to going away for frequent
visits to her mother or to her sister; she began to suffer from
low spirits, she began to recognize that her life was spoilt and
unsatisfied, and at times she did not care to see her husband nor her
children. She was already being treated for neurasthenia.

"We were silent and still silent, and in the presence of outsiders she
displayed a strange irritation in regard to me; whatever I talked
about, she disagreed with me, and if I had an argument she sided with my
opponent. If I dropped anything, she would say coldly:

"'I congratulate you.'

"If I forgot to take the opera-glass when we were going to the theatre,
she would say afterwards:

"'I knew you would forget it.'

"Luckily or unluckily, there is nothing in our lives that does not end
sooner or later. The time of parting came, as Luganovitch was appointed
president in one of the western provinces. They had to sell their
furniture, their horses, their summer villa. When they drove out to the
villa, and afterwards looked back as they were going away, to look for
the last time at the garden, at the green roof, every one was sad, and
I realized that I had to say goodbye not only to the villa. It was
arranged that at the end of August we should see Anna Alexyevna off to
the Crimea, where the doctors were sending her, and that a little later
Luganovitch and the children would set off for the western province.

"We were a great crowd to see Anna Alexyevna off. When she had said
good-bye to her husband and her children and there was only a minute
left before the third bell, I ran into her compartment to put a basket,
which she had almost forgotten, on the rack, and I had to say good-bye.
When our eyes met in the compartment our spiritual fortitude deserted
us both; I took her in my arms, she pressed her face to my breast, and
tears flowed from her eyes. Kissing her face, her shoulders, her hands
wet with tears--oh, how unhappy we were!--I confessed my love for her,
and with a burning pain in my heart I realized how unnecessary, how
petty, and how deceptive all that had hindered us from loving was. I
understood that when you love you must either, in your reasonings about
that love, start from what is highest, from what is more important than
happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue in their accepted meaning, or
you must not