Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 09.djvu/23

Rh "Oh, oh, oh!" he grunted, as he recalled all that had happened. And before his imagination again rose all the details of his quarrel with his wife, the whole hopelessness of his situation, and, most painfully of all, his own guilt.

"Yes! She will not forgive, and she cannot. And what is most terrible of all is that I am the cause of it; I am the cause of it, but I am not guilty. That is where the whole tragedy lies," he thought. "Oh, oh, oh!" he kept muttering in despair, as he recalled the most painful impressions from that quarrel.

Most unpleasant to him was that first minute when, returning from the theatre, happy and satisfied with himself, with an enormous pear for his wife in his hand, he had not found her in the drawing-room, or, to his surprise, in his cabinet, but had finally discovered her in the sleeping-room with the unfortunate note, which had disclosed everything, in her hand.

She, that eternally busy and bustling Dolly, whom he had always regarded as short-sighted, was sitting motionless with the note in her hand, and looked at him with an expression of terror, despair, and anger.

"What is this? This?" she asked, pointing to the note.

And, in this recollection, as is often the case, Stepán Arkádevich was tormented not so much by the event itself as by the answer he gave to these words of his wife.

At that moment there happened to him what happens to people when they are suddenly accused of something disgraceful. He had not had time to prepare his face for the attitude which he took up before his wife after the discovery of his guilt.

Instead of feeling offended, denying, justifying himself, asking forgiveness, even remaining indifferent,—anything would have been better than what he did,—his face quite involuntarily (" cerebral reflexes," thought Stepán Arkádevich, who was fond of physiology),