Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/501

 to all the most important affairs of your inner life,—if you are ahead of your husband in the matter of chastity,—in helping him advance on this path, and, if you yourself have not fulfilled everything demanded of you, in giving to the world other beings who will be able to fulfil it.

Besides, if certain relations exist between husband and wife, both of them invariably take part in it. If one of them is more passionate, it seems to the other that he or she is absolutely chaste; but this is not true.

I think it is not true even in your case. You merely do not see your sin behind the more noticeable sin of some one else. If you were absolutely pure in this respect, you would be indifferent to where your husband is going to find a gratification of his passion,—indifferent in the sense of jealousy, and would only pity him for his fall; but this is not the case.

If you were to ask practical advice of me, I should say: Choose the best minute of a pure mood of love in your husband, and tell him how hard and painful these relations are to you, and how passionately you wish to be freed from them. If, as you write, he does not agree with you that chastity is good, and will insist,—submit, and, if you shall be pregnant, which you ought to wish, demand your full freedom during the time of pregnancy and nursing. And again do the same, and do not trouble yourself as to what will come of it.

Nothing but good can come from it, for you, and for your husband, and for your children, because, by acting in this manner, you will be seeking, not your happiness and peace, but the fulfilment of what God wants of you.

Forgive me if I have not written well; I tried before God to give utterance to what I have experienced and thought concerning this question.

Oppressive relations with one's wife (or husband) can be untied only by a meek life, just as a knot can be untied