Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/431

 partly guided by this very impression. I turned to her. She fell down on a sofa and, putting her hand to her blackened eyes, looked at me. In her face there was an expression of terror and hatred for me, the enemy, such as is expressed in a rat when the trap is opened, in which it has been caught. At least, I did not see anything else in her but this expression of terror and hatred for me. It was the same terror and hatred for me which the love for the other man must have provoked. I still might have abstained from doing what I did if she had kept quiet. But she suddenly began to speak and to seize the hand in which I held the dagger.

"'Come to your senses! What are you doing? What is the matter with you? There is nothing, nothing. I swear!'

"I should have hesitated, but these last words, from which I concluded the opposite, that is, that there was everything, demanded an answer. And the answer had to correspond to the mood to which I had brought myself and which was going crescendo, and continued to become more intense. Fury, too, has its laws.

"'Don't lie, you wretch!' I cried, and caught her arm with my left hand, but she tore herself away. Then I, without dropping the dagger, caught her by the throat with my left hand, threw her down on her back, and began to choke her. How rough her neck was! She clasped my hands with both of hers, pulling them away from her throat. I seemed to have waited just for that: with all my might I thrust the dagger into her left side, below the ribs.

"When people say that in a fit of fury they do not remember what they are doing, they are telling an untruth. I remembered everything, nor did I stop remembering for a single second. The more I raised within me the steam of my fury, the more clearly did the light of consciousness burn within me, so that I could not help