Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/432

 seeing all I was doing. I knew every second what I was doing. I cannot say that I knew in advance what I was going to do, but at any second when I was doing something,—I almost think even a little before it,—I knew what I was doing, as though having a chance of regretting my action, and of saying that I might have stopped it. I knew that I struck her below the ribs, and that the dagger would enter. At the very moment when I was doing it I knew that I was doing something terrible, something which I had never done before, and which would have terrible consequences. But this consciousness flashed like lightning, and the deed followed immediately after the consciousness. The deed was perceived by me with unusual clearness. I heard, and I remember, the momentary resistance of the corset and of something else, and then the sinking of the dagger in something soft. She caught the dagger with her hands and only cut them, without keeping it back.

"I for a long time thought of this moment later, in prison, after the moral transformation had taken place in me; I recalled what I might have done, and I reflected. I remember how for an instant, only for an instant, the deed was preceded by the terrible consciousness that I was killing and already had killed a woman, a helpless woman, my wife! I remember the horror of that consciousness, and so I conclude and even dimly remember that, having pierced her with a dagger, I immediately pulled it out, wishing to mend that which I had done, and to stop it. I stood a moment motionless, waiting to see what would happen and whether it could not be mended.

"She jumped to her feet and cried, 'Nurse, he has killed me!'

"The nurse, who had heard the noise, was standing at the door. I was still standing, waiting, and not believing myself. Just then the blood burst from under her corset.