Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/418

 them on that evening? And was it not evident that even on that evening there was no barrier between them, and that both of them, but especially she, experienced a certain measure of shame after what had happened to them? I remember how she smiled feebly, pitiably, and blissfully, wiping off the perspiration from her heated face, as I went up to the piano. They even then avoided looking at each other, and only at supper, as he poured out a glass of water for her, did they glance at each other and smile an imperceptible smile.'

"I now in terror recalled that glance of theirs with the barely perceptible smile, which I had accidentally noticed. 'Yes, all is ended,' one voice said to me, and immediately the other voice said something quite different: 'You are working under a delusion,—this cannot be.' It made me shudder to lie in the dark. I struck a match, and I felt terribly in that small room with the yellow wall-paper. I lighted a cigarette, and, as is always the case when I move in one and the same circle of insoluble contradictions, I smoked; I smoked one cigarette after another, in order to be befogged and not to notice the contradictions.

"I did not fall asleep all night long, and having decided at five o'clock that I could not remain any longer in this state of tension and that I must go home, I arose, woke the janitor, who was attending to me, and sent him for the horses. I sent a letter to the meeting saying that I was called back to Moscow on urgent business, and asking a member to take my chair. At eight o'clock I sat down in the tarantás and started."