“And when I went to the town I saw every time from her eyes that she was expecting me, and she would confess to me herself that she had had a peculiar feeling all that day and had guessed that I should come.  We talked a long time, and were silent, yet we did not confess our love to each other, but timidly and jealously concealed it.  We were afraid of everything that might reveal our secret to ourselves.  I loved her tenderly, deeply, but I reflected and kept asking myself what our love could lead to if we had not the strength to fight against it.  It seemed to be incredible that my gentle, sad love could all at once coarsely break up the even tenor of the life of her husband, her children, and all the household in which I was so loved and trusted.  Would it be honourable?  She would go away with me, but where?  Where could I take her?  It would have been a different matter if I had had a beautiful, interesting life—­if, for instance, I had been struggling for the emancipation of my country, or had been a celebrated man of science, an artist or a painter; but as it was it would mean taking her from one everyday humdrum life to another as humdrum or perhaps more so.  And how long would our happiness last?  What would happen to her in case I was ill, in case I died, or if we simply grew cold to one another?

“And she apparently reasoned in the same way.  She thought of her husband, her children, and of her mother, who loved the husband like a son.  If she abandoned herself to her feelings she would have to lie, or else to tell the truth, and in her position either would have been equally terrible and inconvenient.  And she was tormented by the question whether her love would bring me happiness—­would she not complicate my life, which, as it was, was hard enough and full of all sorts of trouble?  She fancied she was not young enough for me, that she was not industrious nor energetic enough to begin a new life, and she often talked to her husband of the importance of my marrying a girl of intelligence and merit who would be a capable housewife and a help to me—­and she would immediately add that it would be difficult to find such a girl in the whole town.

“Meanwhile the years were passing.  Anna Alexyevna already had two children.  When I arrived at the Luganovitchs’ the servants smiled cordially, the children shouted that Uncle Pavel Konstantinovitch had come, and hung on my neck; every one was overjoyed.  They did not understand what was passing in my soul, and thought that I, too, was happy.  Every one looked on me as a noble being.  And grown-ups and children alike felt that a noble being was walking about their rooms, and that gave a peculiar charm to their manner towards me, as though in my presence their life, too, was purer and more beautiful.  Anna Alexyevna and I used to go to the theatre together, always walking there; we used to sit side by side in the stalls, our shoulders touching.  I would take the opera-glass from her hands without a word, and feel at that minute that she was near me, that she was mine, that we could not live without each other; but by some strange misunderstanding, when we came out of the theatre we always said good-bye and parted as though we were strangers.  Goodness knows what people were saying about us in the town already, but there was not a word of truth in it all!