Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 09.djvu/24

6 quite involuntarily smiled a habitual, kindly, and, therefore, stupid smile.

This stupid smile he was unable to forgive himself. When Dolly saw it, she shuddered as from a physical pain, burst, with her customary vehemence, into a torrent of cruel words, and ran out of the room. Since then she had not wished to see her husband.

"That stupid smile was the cause of everything," thought Stepán Arkádevich.

"But what is to be done? What is to be done?" he said to himself, in despair, without finding an answer.