“I might go,” he thought, “but what use would there be in it?  I shall only say something inappropriate about boudoirs, about women, about what is honest or dishonest.  What’s the use of talking about what is honest or dishonest, if I must make haste to save my life, if I am suffocating in this cursed slavery and am killing myself? . . .  One must realise at last that to go on leading the life I do is something so base and so cruel that everything else seems petty and trivial beside it.  To run away,” he muttered, sitting down, “to run away.”

The deserted seashore, the insatiable heat, and the monotony of the smoky lilac mountains, ever the same and silent, everlastingly solitary, overwhelmed him with depression, and, as it were, made him drowsy and sapped his energy.  He was perhaps very clever, talented, remarkably honest; perhaps if the sea and the mountains had not closed him in on all sides, he might have become an excellent Zemstvo leader, a statesman, an orator, a political writer, a saint.  Who knows?  If so, was it not stupid to argue whether it were honest or dishonest when a gifted and useful man—­an artist or musician, for instance—­to escape from prison, breaks a wall and deceives his jailers?  Anything is honest when a man is in such a position.

At two o’clock Laevsky and Nadyezhda Fyodorovna sat down to dinner.  When the cook gave them rice and tomato soup, Laevsky said: 

“The same thing every day.  Why not have cabbage soup?”

“There are no cabbages.”

“It’s strange.  Samoylenko has cabbage soup and Marya Konstantinovna has cabbage soup, and only I am obliged to eat this mawkish mess.  We can’t go on like this, darling.”

As is common with the vast majority of husbands and wives, not a single dinner had in earlier days passed without scenes and fault-finding between Nadyezhda Fyodorovna and Laevsky; but ever since Laevsky had made up his mind that he did not love her, he had tried to give way to Nadyezhda Fyodorovna in everything, spoke to her gently and politely, smiled, and called her “darling.”

“This soup tastes like liquorice,” he said, smiling; he made an effort to control himself and seem amiable, but could not refrain from saying:  “Nobody looks after the housekeeping. . . .  If you are too ill or busy with reading, let me look after the cooking.”

In earlier days she would have said to him, “Do by all means,” or, “I see you want to turn me into a cook”; but now she only looked at him timidly and flushed crimson.

“Well, how do you feel to-day?” he asked kindly.

“I am all right to-day.  There is nothing but a little weakness.”

“You must take care of yourself, darling.  I am awfully anxious about you.”