A painful sensation of numbness had seized his heart. He felt as if he
were falling, falling, falling--into a bottomless abyss.

The soft rustle of a silk dress roused him from his torpor by its
familiar sound. Varvara Pavlovna came in hurriedly from out of doors.
Lavretsky shuddered all over and rushed out of the room. He felt that
at that moment he was ready to tear her to pieces, to strangle her
with his own hands, at least to beat her all but to death in peasant
fashion. Varvara Pavlovna, in her amazement, wanted to stay him. He
just succeeded in whispering "Betty"--and then he fled from the house.

Lavretsky took a carriage and drove outside the barriers. All the rest
of the day, and the whole of the night he wandered about, constantly
stopping and wringing his hands above his head. Sometimes he was
frantic with rage, at others every thing seemed to move him to
laughter, even to a kind of mirth. When the morning dawned he felt
half frozen, so he entered a wretched little suburban tavern, asked
for a room, and sat down on a chair before the window. A convulsive
fit of yawning seized him. By that time he was scarcely able to keep
upright, and his bodily strength was utterly exhausted. Still he was
not conscious of fatigue. But fatigue had its own way. He continued
sitting there and gazing vacantly, but he comprehended nothing. He
could not make out what had happened to him, why he found himself
there, alone, in an empty, unknown room, with numbed limbs, with a
sense of bitterness in his mouth, with a weight like that of a great
stone on his heart. He could not understand what had induced her, his
Varvara, to give herself to that Frenchman, and how, knowing herself
to be false to him, she could have remained as calm as ever in his
presence, as confiding and caressing as ever towards him. "I cannot
make it out," whispered his dry lips. "And how can I be sure now that