Anna, who had thought she knew her husband so well, was amazed at his appearance when he went in to her.  His brow was lowering, and his eyes stared darkly before him, avoiding her eyes; his mouth was tightly and contemptuously shut.  In his walk, in his gestures, in the sound of his voice there was a determination and firmness such as his wife had never seen in him.  He went into her room, and without greeting her, walked straight up to her writing-table, and taking her keys, opened a drawer.

“What do you want?” she cried.

“Your lover’s letters,” he said.

“They’re not here,” she said, shutting the drawer; but from that action he saw he had guessed right, and roughly pushing away her hand, he quickly snatched a portfolio in which he knew she used to put her most important papers.  She tried to pull the portfolio away, but he pushed her back.

“Sit down!  I have to speak to you,” he said, putting the portfolio under his arm, and squeezing it so tightly with his elbow that his shoulder stood up.  Amazed and intimidated, she gazed at him in silence.

“I told you that I would not allow you to receive your lover in this house.”

“I had to see him to...”

She stopped, not finding a reason.

“I do not enter into the details of why a woman wants to see her lover.”

“I meant, I only...” she said, flushing hotly.  This coarseness of his angered her, and gave her courage.  “Surely you must feel how easy it is for you to insult me?” she said.

“An honest man and an honest woman may be insulted, but to tell a thief he’s a thief is simply la constatation d’un fait.”

“This cruelty is something new I did not know in you.”

“You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife liberty, giving her the honorable protection of his name, simply on the condition of observing the proprieties:  is that cruelty?”

“It’s worse than cruel—­it’s base, if you want to know!” Anna cried, in a rush of hatred, and getting up, she was going away.

“No!” he shrieked, in his shrill voice, which pitched a note higher than usual even, and his big hands clutching her by the arm so violently that red marks were left from the bracelet he was squeezing, he forcibly sat her down in her place.

“Base!  If you care to use that word, what is base is to forsake husband and child for a lover, while you eat your husband’s bread!”

She bowed her head.  She did not say what she had said the evening before to her lover, that he was her husband, and her husband was superfluous; she did not even think that.  She felt all the justice of his words, and only said softly: 

“You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be myself; but what are you saying all this for?”

“What am I saying it for? what for?” he went on, as angrily.  “That you may know that since you have not carried out my wishes in regard to observing outward decorum, I will take measures to put an end to this state of things.”