Never afterwards did he feel it with such intensity, but this first time he could not for a long while get over it.  His natural feeling urged him to defend himself, to prove to her she was wrong; but to prove her wrong would mean irritating her still more and making the rupture greater that was the cause of all his suffering.  One habitual feeling impelled him to get rid of the blame and to pass it on to her.  Another feeling, even stronger, impelled him as quickly as possible to smooth over the rupture without letting it grow greater.  To remain under such undeserved reproach was wretched, but to make her suffer by justifying himself was worse still.  Like a man half-awake in an agony of pain, he wanted to tear out, to fling away the aching place, and coming to his senses, he felt that the aching place was himself.  He could do nothing but try to help the aching place to bear it, and this he tried to do.

They made peace.  She, recognizing that she was wrong, though she did not say so, became tenderer to him, and they experienced new, redoubled happiness in their love.  But that did not prevent such quarrels from happening again, and exceedingly often too, on the most unexpected and trivial grounds.  These quarrels frequently arose from the fact that they did not yet know what was of importance to each other and that all this early period they were both often in a bad temper.  When one was in a good temper, and the other in a bad temper, the peace was not broken; but when both happened to be in an ill-humor, quarrels sprang up from such incomprehensibly trifling causes, that they could never remember afterwards what they had quarreled about.  It is true that when they were both in a good temper their enjoyment of life was redoubled.  But still this first period of their married life was a difficult time for them.

During all this early time they had a peculiarly vivid sense of tension, as it were, a tugging in opposite directions of the chain by which they were bound.  Altogether their honeymoon—­that is to say, the month after their wedding—­from which from tradition Levin expected so much, was not merely not a time of sweetness, but remained in the memories of both as the bitterest and most humiliating period in their lives.  They both alike tried in later life to blot out from their memories all the monstrous, shameful incidents of that morbid period, when both were rarely in a normal frame of mind, both were rarely quite themselves.

It was only in the third month of their married life, after their return from Moscow, where they had been staying for a month, that their life began to go more smoothly.

Chapter 15