reason of all this is that I have taken a few walks in the garden with
her cousin, to whom I did not give even a thought. I begin to
divine, but I cannot say so. If I say so, I confirm her suspicions. I
interrogate her, I question her. She does not answer, but she sees that
I understand, and that confirms her suspicions.

"'What is the matter with you?' I ask.

"'Nothing, I am as well as usual,' she answers.

"And at the same time, like a crazy woman, she gives utterance to the
silliest remarks, to the most inexplicable explosions of spite.

"Sometimes I am patient, but at other times I break out with anger. Then
her own irritation is launched forth in a flood of insults, in charges
of imaginary crimes and all carried to the highest degree by sobs,
tears, and retreats through the house to the most improbable spots. I
go to look for her. I am ashamed before people, before the children, but
there is nothing to be done. She is in a condition where I feel that she
is ready for anything. I run, and finally find her. Nights of torture
follow, in which both of us, with exhausted nerves, appease each other,
after the most cruel words and accusations.

"Yes, jealousy, causeless jealousy, is the condition of our debauched
conjugal life. And throughout my marriage never did I cease to feel it
and to suffer from it. There were two periods in which I suffered most
intensely. The first time was after the birth of our first child,
when the doctors had forbidden my wife to nurse it. I was particularly
jealous, in the first place, because my wife felt that restlessness
peculiar to animal matter when the regular course of life is interrupted
without occasion. But especially was I jealous because, having seen
with what facility she had thrown off her moral duties as a mother, I
concluded rightly, though unconsciously, that she would throw off as
easily her conjugal duties, feeling all the surer of this because she
was in perfect health, as was shown by the fact that, in spite of the
prohibition of the dear doctors, she nursed her following children, and
even very well."

"I see that you have no love for the doctors," said I, having noticed
Posdnicheff's extraordinarily spiteful expression of face and tone of
voice whenever he spoke of them.

"It is not a question of loving them or of not loving them. They have
ruined my life, as they have ruined the lives of thousands of beings
before me, and I cannot help connecting the conseque