She made up her mind to find her husband at once and tell him all
about it: it was disgusting, absolutely disgusting, that he was
attractive to other women and sought their admiration as though it
were some heavenly manna; it was unjust and dishonourable that he
should give to others what belonged by right to his wife, that he
should hide his soul and his conscience from his wife to reveal
them to the first pretty face he came across. What harm had his
wife done him? How was she to blame? Long ago she had been sickened
by his lying: he was for ever posing, flirting, saying what he did
not think, and trying to seem different from what he was and what
he ought to be. Why this falsity? Was it seemly in a decent man?
If he lied he was demeaning himself and those to whom he lied, and
slighting what he lied about. Could he not understand that if he
swaggered and posed at the judicial table, or held forth at dinner
on the prerogatives of Government, that he, simply to provoke her
uncle, was showing thereby that he had not a ha'p'orth of respect
for the Court, or himself, or any of the people who were listening
and looking at him?

Coming out into the big avenue, Olga Mihalovna assumed an expression
of face as though she had just gone away to look after some domestic
matter. In the verandah the gentlemen were drinking liqueur and
eating strawberries: one of them, the Examining Magistrate--a
stout elderly man, _blagueur_ and wit--must have been telling
some rather free anecdote, for, seeing their hostess, he suddenly
clapped his hands over his fat lips, rolled his eyes, and sat down.
Olga Mihalovna did not like the local officials. She did not care
for their clumsy, ceremonious wives, their scandal-mongering, their
frequent visits, their flattery of her husband, whom they all hated.