On the other side was a postscript: 

“Maman vous fait dire que votre couvert vous attendra jusqu’
a la nuit.  Venez absolument a quelle heure que cela soit.  M. K.”

Nekhludoff knit his brows.  The note was the continuation of a skillful strategem whereby the Princess sought, for the last two months, to fasten him with invisible bonds.  But Nekhludoff, besides the usual irresoluteness before marriage of people of his age, and who are not passionately in love, had an important reason for withholding his offer of marriage for the time being.  The reason was not that ten years before he had ruined and abandoned Katiousha, which incident he had entirely forgotten, but that at this very time he was sustaining relations with a married woman, and though he now considered them at an end, they were not so considered by her.

In the presence of women, Nekhludoff was very shy, but it was this very shyness that determined the married woman to conquer him.  This woman was the wife of the commander of the district in which Nekhludoff was one of the electors.  She led him into relations with her which held him fast, and at the same time grew more and more repulsive to him.  At first Nekhludoff could not resist her wiles, then, feeling himself at fault, he could not break off the relations against her will.  This was the reason why Nekhludoff considered that he had no right, even if he desired, to ask for the hand of Korchagin.  A letter from the husband of that woman happened to lay on the table.  Recognizing the handwriting and the stamp, Nekhludoff flushed and immediately felt an influx of that energy which he always experienced in the face of danger.  But there was no cause for his agitation; the husband, as commander of the district where Nekhludoff’s estates were situated, informed the latter of a special meeting of the local governing body, and asked him to be present without fail, and donner un coup d’epaule in the important measures to be submitted concerning the schools and roads, and that the reactionary party was expected to offer strong opposition.

The commander was a liberal-minded man, entirely absorbed with the struggles, and knew nothing about his wretched family life.

Nekhludoff recalled all the tortures this man had occasioned him; how on one occasion he thought that the husband had discovered all, and he was preparing to fight a duel with him, intending to use a blank cartridge, and the ensuing scene where she, in despair, ran to the pond, intending to drown herself, while he ran to search for her.  “I cannot go now, and can undertake nothing until I have heard from her,” thought Nekhludoff.  The preceding week he had written to her a decisive letter, acknowledging his guilt, and expressing his readiness to redeem it in any manner she should suggest, but for her own good, considered their relations ended.  It is to this letter that he expected a reply.  He considered it a favorable sign that no reply came.  If she had not consented to a separation, she would have answered long ago, or would have come personally, as she often did before.  Nekhludoff had heard that an army officer was courting her, and while he was tormented by jealousy, he was at the same time gladdened by the hope of release from the oppressive lie.