Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/397

 pretends. Now I understand you. That is what you want to do!'—'Oh, I wish you were dead!' I cry. I remember how these terrible words frightened me. I had not thought I could say such terrible, coarse words, and I wonder how they could have escaped from me. I cry these terrible words, and I run into my cabinet, and sit down and smoke. I hear her coming out into the antechamber and getting ready to depart. I ask her where she is going, but she does not answer. 'The devil take her,' I say to myself, returning to my cabinet, and I again lie down and smoke. A thousand different plans as to how to take my revenge on her and get rid of her, how to mend it all and make it appear as though nothing had happened, pass through my mind. I meditate over this, and I smoke, and smoke, and smoke. I think of running away from her, of hiding, of going to America. I go so far as to imagine how I shall be rid of her and how nice it will be when I shall unite with another beautiful and entirely fresh woman. I shall get rid of her by her death, or by being divorced from her, and I am planning how to do it. I see that I am getting mixed up and that I am not thinking of what I ought to think about, and in order not to see that I am not thinking of what I ought to think about, I smoke.

"Life at home goes on. The governess comes and asks: 'Where is madam? When will she return?' The lackey asks: 'Shall tea be served?' I come to the dining-room, and the children, especially the eldest, Líza, who can comprehend, look interrogatively and disapprovingly at me. We drink tea in silence. She is not yet back. A whole evening passes, she is not back, and two feelings alternately arise in my soul: anger with her for tormenting me and the children by her absence, which will end by her return, and fear that she will not return and will do something to herself. I should like to go to find her. But where shall I look for her? At her