Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/414

 I had never known before, were revealed to me. 'Yes, that is so, it is quite different from what I used to think and feel about it; it is like this,' a voice seemed to say within me. What this new thing was which I had discovered I was not able to explain to myself, but the consciousness of this new condition was a pleasurable one. All the people present—among them my wife and he—presented themselves in a new light to me.

"After the allegro they played the beautiful, but common, and not new andante with trite variations, and a very weak finale. After that they played, at the guests' request, an elegy by Ernst, and some other trifles. All that was very nice, but it did not produce on me one-hundredth part of the impression which the first had produced. All this took place on the background of the impression which had been evoked by the first piece.

"I felt light and happy on that evening. I had never before seen my wife as she was on that evening. Those sparkling eyes, that severity and expressiveness while she was playing, and that complete dissolution, if I may so call it, and that feeble, pitiable, and blissful smile after they were through! I saw it all, but ascribed no other meaning to it than that she was experiencing the same as I, and that to her, as to me, there were revealed, or, as it were, brought back, new, unfelt sensations. The evening came to a successful end and all departed.

"Knowing that I was to leave in two days to attend to the meeting, Trukhachévski at leaving said that he hoped at his next visit to repeat the pleasure of the present evening. From this I could conclude that he did not consider it possible to be in my house during my absence, and this pleased me.

"It turned out that since I should not be back before his departure, we should not meet again.

"I for the first time pressed his hand with real joy and