Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/401

 took a liking to him from the start. Besides, she was happy to have a chance of playing with a violin, which she liked so much that she used to hire a violinist from the theatre for the purpose, and her face beamed with joy. But, upon looking at me, she at once understood my feeling and so she changed her expression, and there began that game of mutual deception. I smiled a pleasant smile, making it appear that this gave me pleasure. He, glancing at my wife, as all immoral men look at a pretty woman, made it appear that he was interested only in the subject of the conversation, although it did not interest him in the least. She tried to seem indifferent, but my familiar false smile of a jealous man and his lustful glance apparently excited her.

"I noticed that from that first meeting on her eyes were peculiarly sparkling, and, obviously on account of my jealousy, there was established between them something like an electrical current, which provoked in them a similarity of facial expressions and smiles. She blushed and he blushed. She smiled and he smiled. They spoke of music, of Paris, of all kinds of trifles. He arose to leave, and stood, smiling, with his hat on his contracting thigh, looking now at her, and now at me, as though waiting to see what we would do. I remember that particular moment because I might have failed to invite him, and nothing further would have happened. But I looked at him and at her. 'Don't imagine that I am jealous,' I mentally said to her, 'or that I am afraid of you,' I mentally said to him, and I invited him to bring his violin some evening, in order to play with my wife. She looked at me in surprise, flared up, and, as though frightened at something, began to refuse, saying that she did not play well enough. This refusal irritated me even more, and I insisted more urgently.

"I remember the strange feeling with which I looked at the back of his head and at his white neck, which