Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/404

 manner," he began once more, evidently making an effort to be calm.

"Two or three days later I returned home from some exhibition. I entered the antechamber, and a heavy sensation overcame me: I felt as though a stone had been rolled upon my heart, and I was unable to account for this sensation. There was something which reminded me of him, as I passed through the antechamber. Ouly when I had reached the cabinet did I find an explanation of it, and I returned to the antechamber to verify it. Yes, I was not mistaken: it was his overcoat. (Everything which came in contact with him I noticed very attentively, without being conscious of doing so.) I asked whether he was there, and I found he was. I went to the parlour, not through the drawing-room, but through the children's study. My daughter, Líza, was sitting over a book, and the nurse was with the baby at the table, spinning a lid or something. The door to the parlour was closed, and I there heard an even arpeggio and his voice and hers. I listened, but could not make out what it was.

"'Evidently the sounds of the piano are on purpose to drown their words and kisses,' I thought,—'perhaps.' O Lord, what a storm rose within me! Terror takes possession of me as I think of what animal was then living within me! My heart was compressed and stopped, and then began to beat as with a hammer. The chief feeling, as during every rage, was that of compassion for myself. 'Before the children, before the nurse!' I thought. I must have been terrible, because Líza looked at me with strange eyes. 'What had I better do?' I asked myself. 'Had I better go in? I can't, for God knows what I will do there. Nor can I go away. The nurse is looking at me as though she understood my situation. I must go in,' I said to myself, and rapidly opened the door. He was sitting at the piano and was making these arpeggios