The Duel and Other Stories

said or did seemed to him a lie, or equivalent to a lie, and everything he read against women

inking of coffee was not such a remarkable event that she need put on a preoccupied expression over it, and that she had been wasting her time doing her hair in a fashionable style, as there was no one

t for me to go to ba

arthquake whether you go

n case the doctor

doctor, then; I

the little curls at the back of her head. And he remembered that when Anna Karenin got tired of

h his fault that her husband had died. It seemed to him that he had sinned against his own life, which he had ruined, against the world of lofty ideas, of learning, and of work, and he conceived that wonderful world as real and possible, not on this sea-front with hungry Turks and lazy mountaineers sauntering upon it, but there in the North, where there were operas, theatres, newspapers, and all kinds of intellectual activity. One could only there-not here-be honest, intelligent, l

d to himself, sitting

n a

owing colder and keener, then the birches and the fir-trees, then Kursk, Moscow. . . . In the restaurants cabbage soup, mutton with kasha, sturgeon, beer, no more Asiaticism, but Russia, real Russia. The passengers in the train would talk about trade, new singers, the Franco-Russian entente; on al

ne called from the next

sky responded. "

per

ling with his slippers. There, at the open window that looked into the street, stood o

went to look for the ink; returning to the window, he sign

you comi

. I'm not quite well.

and see him

sky lay down on his sofa

two thousand roubles. I have no money. . . . Of course, that's not important; I shall pay part now, somehow, and I shall send the

g whether it would not be better

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

aps 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, w

and Nadyezhda Fyodoro

them rice and tomat

ery day. Why not h

re no ca

stantinovna has cabbage soup, and only I am obliged to e

ult-finding between Nadyezhda Fyodorovna and Laevsky; but ever since Laevsky had made up his mind that he did not love her, he

elf and seem amiable, but could not refrain from saying: "Nobody looks after the house

means," or, "I see you want to turn me into a cook"; bu

u feel to-day?"

y. There is nothing b

ourself, darling. I am a

m and a cane stretched along his back, was of opinion that she had a female complaint, and prescribed warm compresses. In old days, when Laevsky loved her, Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's illness had excited his pity and terror; now he saw falsity even in her illness. Her yellow, sleepy face, her lustreless eyes, her a

ing milk, and he heard her swallowing, he was possessed by such an overwhelming aversion that it made his head tingle. He recognised that such a feeling would be an insult even to a dog, but he was angry, not with himself but

said after dinner,

a on the

tes in walking to and fro, looking at his boo

We must define the po

again that Nadyezhda Fyodorovna's hus

s legs in order to put on his high boots. "Love and hatred are not under our control. As for her husband, maybe I was in an

dgings of his colleague, Sheshkovsky, where the Govern

s me of Hamlet," thou

peare describes i