Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/405

 with his large, white, arched fingers. She was standing at the corner of the grand over some open music. She was the first to see or hear me, and she glanced at me. I do not know whether she was frightened, or pretended not to be frightened, or really was not frightened, but she did not shudder, nor budge,—she only blushed, and that, too, after some time.

"'How glad I am you have come! We have not yet decided what to play on Sunday,' she said to me in a tone of voice which she would not have employed if we had been alone. This fact and her saying 'we' of herself and of him exasperated me. I silently exchanged greetings with him.

"He pressed my hand and immediately began to explain to me, with a smile which I interpreted as ridicule, that he had brought me some music for the Sunday, and that they could not agree what to play: whether it was to be more difficult and classical music, more especially a sonata by Beethoven with the violin, or some light things. Everything was so natural and simple that it was impossible to find any fault with anything; at the same time I was convinced that it was all an untruth, and that they had come to some kind of an agreement how to deceive me.

"One of the most agonizing situations for a jealous man (in our social life all men are jealous) is caused by certain social conditions under which the greatest and most perilous proximity between man and woman is permitted. One would become a laughing-stock of people, if one were to be set against the close proximity at balls, or the doctors' proximity to their female patients, or the proximity during occupations with art, painting, or more especially with music. A certain proximity is necessary there, and there is nothing prejudicial in this proximity: only a foolish, jealous man can see anything undesirable in it. And yet, everybody knows that the greater part