Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/403

 he was glad of it. He did not have the least doubt that she was willing. The whole question revolved only on keeping the intolerable husband out of the way. If I myself had been pure, I should not have understood it; but I used to think the same way about women, before I was married, and so I read in his soul as in a book.

"What tormented me more especially was that I had convinced myself that she had no other feeling for me than that of constant irritation, rarely interrupted by the usual sensuality, and that this man, by his external elegance and novelty, but especially by his unquestionably great musical talent, by the proximity due to their play in common, by the influence produced on impressionable natures by music, particularly by the violin,—that this man must of necessity not only be to her liking, but that he, without the least wavering, must vanquish, crush, and twist her, wind her into a rope, make of her anything he pleased. I could not help seeing all this, and I suffered terribly. Yet, in spite of it, or maybe on that very account, some power against my will made me be not only very polite, but even gracious to him. I do not know whether I did so for my wife's sake, or for his, in order to show that I was not afraid of him, or for my own sake, in order to deceive myself,—however it may be, I could not be simple with him from my first relations with him. In order not to surrender myself to my desire of killing him on the spot, I had to be kind to him. I gave him costly wines to drink at supper, went into ecstasies over his playing, spoke with him with an unusually kindly smile, and invited him to dinner for the coming Sunday, when he could again play with my wife. I told him I would call together a few of my acquaintances, lovers of music, to listen to his playing. And thus came the end."

Pózdnyshev in great agitation changed his position and emitted his peculiar sound.

"The presence of this man affected me in a strange