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 noticed before.  There was a red snake with diamond eyes on the pin; this snake struck her as so amusing that she could have kissed it on the spot.

Sofya Petrovna sang nervously, with defiant recklessness as though half intoxicated, and she chose sad, mournful songs which dealt with wasted hopes, the past, old age, as though in mockery of another’s grief. “‘And old age comes nearer and nearer’ . . .” she sang.  And what was old age to her?

“It seems as though there is something going wrong with me,” she thought from time to time through her laughter and singing.

The party broke up at twelve o’clock.  Ilyin was the last to leave.  Sofya Petrovna was still reckless enough to accompany him to the bottom step of the verandah.  She wanted to tell him that she was going away with her husband, and to watch the effect this news would produce on him.

The moon was hidden behind the clouds, but it was light enough for Sofya Petrovna to see how the wind played with the skirts of his overcoat and with the awning of the verandah.  She could see, too, how white Ilyin was, and how he twisted his upper lip in the effort to smile.

“Sonia, Sonitchka . . . my darling woman!” he muttered, preventing her from speaking.  “My dear! my sweet!”

In a rush of tenderness, with tears in his voice, he showered caressing words upon her, that grew tenderer and tenderer, and even called her “thou,” as though she were his wife or mistress.  Quite unexpectedly he put one arm round her waist and with the other hand took hold of her elbow.