Page:Rolland Life of Tolstoy.djvu/140

136 The Countess was touched, no doubt; she tried to conceal her impatience; but she did not understand; and she watched her husband anxiously.

“His eyes are strange and fixed. He scarcely speaks. He does not seem to belong to this world.”

She feared he was ill.

“Leo is always working, by what he tells me. Alas! he is writing religious discussions of some kind. He reads and he ponders until he gives himself the headache, and all this to prove that the Church is not in agreement with the teaching of the Gospel. He will hardly find a dozen people in Russia whom the matter could possibly interest. But there is nothing to be done. I have only one hope: that he will be done with it all the sooner, and that it will pass off like an illness.”

The illness did not pass away. The situation between husband and wife became more and more painful. They loved one another; each had a profound esteem for the other; but it was impossible for them to understand one another. They strove to make mutual concessions, which became—as is usually the case—a form of mutual torment. Tolstoy forced himself to follow his family to Moscow. He wrote in his Journal:

“The most painful month of my life. Getting settled in Moscow. All are settling down. But when, then, will they begin to live? All this, not in order to live, but because other folk do the same. Unhappy people!”

During these days the Countess wrote: