is
vain. Ah, if it would only so turn out!' 'But no, that has happened too
often! Now the end has come,' a voice said to me.

"And again it all began. Ah, what torture! It is not to a hospital
filled with syphilitic patients that I would take a young man to deprive
him of the desire for women, but into my soul, to show him the demon
which tore it. The frightful part was that I recognized in myself an
indisputable right to the body of my wife, as if her body were entirely
mine. And at the same time I felt that I could not possess this body,
that it was not mine, that she could do with it as she liked, and that
she liked to do with it as I did not like. And I was powerless against
him and against her. He, like the Vanka of the song, would sing, before
mounting the gallows, how he would kiss her sweet lips, etc., and he
would even have the best of it before death. With her it was still
worse. If she HAD NOT DONE IT, she had the desire, she wished to do it,
and I knew that she did. That was worse yet. It would be better if she
had already done it, to relieve me of my uncertainty.

"In short, I could not say what I desired. I desired that she might not
want what she MUST want. It was complete madness."

CHAPTER XXVI.

"At the station before the last, when the conductor came to take the
tickets, I took my baggage and went out on the car platform, and
the consciousness that the climax was near at hand only added to my
agitation. I was cold, my jaw trembled so that my teeth chattered.
Mechanically I left the station with the crowd, I took a tchik, and I
started. I looked at the few people passing in the streets and at the
dvorniks. I read the signs, without thinking of anything. After going
half a verst my feet began to feel cold, and I remembered that in the
car I had taken off my woollen socks, and had put them in my travelling
bag. Where had I put the bag? Was it with me? Yes, and the basket?

"I bethought myself that I had totally forgotten my baggage. I took out
my check, and then decided it was not worth while to return. I continued
on my way. In spite of all my efforts to remember, I cannot at this
moment make out why I was in such a hurry. I know only that I was
conscious that a serious and menacing event was approaching in my life.
It was a case of real auto-suggestion. Was it so serious because I
thought it so? Or had I a presentiment? I do not know. Perhaps, too,
after what has happened, all previous events