elf and her husband
more every day, and she had suffered the torments of hell. But the
day before, when during a quarrel he had cried out in a tearful
voice, "My God, when will it end?" and had walked off to his study,
she had run after him like a cat after a mouse, and, preventing him
from shutting the door, she had cried that she hated him with her
whole soul. Then he let her come into the study and she had told
him everything, had confessed that she loved some one else, that
that some one else was her real, most lawful husband, and that she
thought it her true duty to go away to him that very day, whatever
might happen, if she were to be shot for it.

"There's a very romantic streak in you," Orlov interrupted, keeping
his eyes fixed on the newspaper.

She laughed and went on talking without touching her coffee. Her
cheeks glowed and she was a little embarrassed by it, and she looked
in confusion at Polya and me. From what she went on to say I learnt
that her husband had answered her with threats, reproaches, and
finally tears, and that it would have been more accurate to say
that she, and not he, had been the attacking party.

"Yes, my dear, so long as I was worked up, everything went all
right," she told Orlov; "but as night came on, my spirits sank. You
don't believe in God, _George_, but I do believe a little, and I
fear retribution. God requires of us patience, magnanimity,
self-sacrifice, and here I am refusing to be patient and want to
remodel my life to suit myself. Is that right? What if from the
point of view of God it's wrong? At two o'clock in the night my
husband came to me and said: 'You dare not go away. I'll fetch you
back through the police and make a scandal.' And soon afterwards I
saw him like a shadow at my door. 'Have mercy on me! Your elopement
may injure me in the service.' Those words had a coarse effect upon
me and made me feel stiff all over. I felt as though the retribution
were beginning already; I began crying and trembling with terror.
I felt as though the ceiling would fall upon me, that I should be
dragged off to the police-station at once, that you would grow cold
to me--all sorts of things, in fact! I thought I would go into a
nunnery or become a nurse, and give up all thought of happiness,
but then I remembered that you loved me, and that I had no right
to dispose of myself without your knowledge; and everything in my
mind was in a tangle--I was in despair and did not know what t