before her and embrace her knees as he had at the seat in the wood. . . .
She caught herself indulging in this day-dream.
"Listen. I won't go alone," she said. "You must come with me."
"Nonsense, Sofotchka!" sighed Lubyantsev. "One must be sensible and not want the
impossible."
"You will come when you know all about it," thought Sofya Petrovna.
Making up her mind to go at all costs, she felt that she was out of danger. Little by little her
ideas grew clearer; her spirits rose and she allowed herself to think about it all, feeling that
however much she thought, however much she dreamed, she would go away. While her
husband was asleep, the evening gradually came on. She sat in the drawing-room and
played the piano. The greater liveliness out of doors, the sound of music, but above all the
thought that she was a sensible person, that she had surmounted her difficulties, completely
restored her spirits. Other women, her appeased conscience told her, would probably have
been carried off their feet in her position, and would have lost their balance, while she had
almost died of shame, had been miserable, and was now running out of the danger which
perhaps did not exist! She was so touched by her own virtue and determination that she
even looked at herself two or three times in the looking-glass.
When it got dark, visitors arrived. The men sat down in the dining-room to play cards; the
ladies remained in the drawing-room and the verandah. The last to arrive was Ilyin. He was
gloomy, morose, and looked ill. He sat down in the corner of the sofa and did not move the
whole evening. Usually good-humoured and talkative, this time he remained silent,
frowned, and rubbed his eyebrows. When he had to answer some question, he gave a forced
smile with his upper lip only, and answered jerkily and irritably. Four or five times he made
some jest, but his jests sounded harsh and cutting. It seemed to Sofya Petrovna that he was
on the verge of hysterics. Only now, sitting at the piano, she recognized fully for the first
time that this unhappy man was in deadly earnest, that his soul was sick, and that he could
find no rest. For her sake he was wasting the best days of his youth and his career, spending
the last of his money on a summer villa, abandoning his mother and sisters, and, worst of
all, wearing himself out in an agonizing struggle with himself. From mere common
humanity he ought to be treated seriously.
She recognized all this clearly till it made her heart ache, and if at that moment she had
gone up to him and said to him, "No," there would have been a force in her voice hard to
disobey. But she did not go up to him and did not speak -- indeed, never thought of doing
so. The pettiness and egoism of youth had never been more patent in her than that evening.
She realized that Ilyin was unhappy, and that he was sitting on the sofa as though he were
on hot coals; she felt sorry for him, but at the same time the presence of a man who loved
her to distraction, filled her soul with triumph and a sense of her own power. She felt her
youth, her beauty, and her unassailable virtue, and, since she had decided to go away, gave
herself full licence for that evening. She flirted, laughed incessantly, sang with peculiar
feeling and gusto. Everything delighted and amused her. She was amused at the memory of
what had happened at the seat in the wood, of the sentinel who had looked on. She was
amused by her guests, by Ilyin's cutting jests, by the pin in his cravat, which she had never