Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 02.djvu/109

 feeling of provocation at this strained relation. A voice told him, "It is not that, not that," and it really turned out that way.

Then he recalled the ball and the mazurka with beautiful D. "How I was in love that night, and how happy I was! And how pained and mortified I was when I awoke the next morning, and felt that I was free! Why does not love come? and bind my hands and feet?" he thought. "No, there is no love! My neighbour, who told me, and Dubróvin, and the marshal of nobility, that she loved the stars, was not that either."

And he thought of his farming activity in the country, and found no pleasant incident upon which to rest his memory. "Will they think for a long time of my departure?" it suddenly occurred to him. But whom did he mean by "they"? He did not know, and immediately a thought came to him that made him frown and utter indistinct sounds: it was the recollection of M. Capelle and the 678 roubles which he owed his tailor; and he recalled the words with which he begged the tailor to wait another year, and the expression of amazement and of submission to fate which appeared on the tailor's countenance.

"O Lord, Lord!" he repeated, blinking, and trying to dispel the unbearable thought. "And yet, she loved me, in spite of it," he thought of the maiden of whom they had been speaking at the leave-taking. "If I married her, I should have no debts, but now I still owe Vasílev."

And he recalled the last evening which he had passed at the gaming-table with Vasílev in the club, whither he had driven straight from her house; and he recalled his humiliating requests to continue playing, and Vasílev's cold refusals. "One year of strict economy, and all that will be paid, and the devil take them—" But in spite of his self-assurance, he again started to count up his