Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/425

 (the windows that were lighted were those of the parlour and drawing-room of my apartment). Without rendering myself any account of why there was a light in our windows so late at night, I, in the same mood of expectation of something terrible, ascended the staircase and rang the bell. Egór, a good, careful, and most stupid lackey, opened the door. The first thing my eyes fell upon was an overcoat hanging with other clothes on the rack of the antechamber. I ought to have been surprised, but I was not, because I expected it. 'That's it,' I said to myself. When I asked Egór who was there and he named Trukhachévski, I asked whether there was anybody else. He said, 'Nobody, sir.' I remember how he told me this with an intonation as if to give me pleasure and dispel my doubts as to the presence of anybody else. 'Yes, yes,' I seemed to be saying to myself. 'And the children?'—'Thank God, they are well. They have been asleep for quite awhile, sir.'

"I could not draw breath nor stop my jaws from shaking. 'So, I see, it is not as I had thought: formerly I used to expect a misfortune, but everything was as of old. Now everything is not as of old; here is everything I have been imagining,—everything I thought I only imagined has now actually happened. Here it is all.—'

"I came very near sobbing out, but the devil immediately whispered to me: 'You weep and become sentimental, and they will quietly part from each other, there will be no proofs, and you will all your life be in doubt and torment.' Directly my sentimentality disappeared, and there arose a strange feeling of joy because now my torment will come to an end, because I could punish her and get rid of her, because I could give free play to my rage. I did give free play to my rage,—I became a beast, an evil, cunning beast. 'Don't, don't,' I said to Egór, who wanted to go to the drawing-room. 'Do this: take a cab at once and go to the station; here is the