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242 "But, Viérotchka, maybe it would be well for me to know about it."

"Very well, my dearest! I dreamed that I was bored because I had not gone to the opera, and I was thinking about Bosio; some woman seemed to call on me, and at first I thought it was Bosio, but she kept hiding from me; she compelled me to read my diary; and there was nothing in it except how we loved each other; but when she touched her hand to the pages, new words seemed to be which said that I did not love you."

"Forgive me, dearie, for asking one thing more. Was that all that you saw in your dream?"

"My dearest, if that had not been all, wouldn't I have told thee so? And I have already told thee all."

This was said so tenderly, so sincerely, so simply, that Lopukhóf felt in his heart a wave of warmth and sweetness, such as one who has once experienced this joy will never forget till his dying day. Oh, how pitiful that only a few, a very few, husbands can have this feeling! All the pleasures of happy love are nothing in comparison with it; it fills the human heart with the purest content, the holiest pride. In Viéra Pavlovna's words, which were spoken with a shade of melancholy, rang a reproach, but the significance of the reproach was this: "My dear, don't you know that I have perfect confidence in you? A wife may hide from her husband the mysterious motions of her soul; such are those very relations in which they stand to each other. But you, my dear, have so behaved that there has never been any need of hiding things from you, that my heart is open before you as before my own eyes."

This is a great merit in a husband; this great reward is purchased only by a high moral worth, and whoever has deserved it has a right to look upon himself as a man of unquestionable nobility; he may boldly hope that his conscience is pure and will always remain pure, that his manhood will never play him false, that in all trials of every sort he will remain calm and firm, that fate is not reigning over the peace of his soul, that from the time that he has deserved this great honor, to the very last moment of his life, disregarding whatever shocks to which he may be subjected; he will be happy in the consciousness of his worthy manhood. Now we know enough of Lopukhóf to see that he was not