have a thorough knowledge of the law, you are very honest and just, you
respect marriage and family life, and the effect of all that is that all
your life you have not done one kind action, that every one hates you,
that you are on bad terms with every one, and the seven years that you
have been married you've only lived seven months with your wife. You've
had no wife and I've had no husband. To live with a man like you is
impossible; there is no way of doing it. In the early years I was
frightened with you, and now I am ashamed.... That's how my best years
have been wasted. When I fought with you I ruined my temper, grew
shrewish, coarse, timid, mistrustful.... Oh, but what's the use of
talking! As though you wanted to understand! Go upstairs, and God be
with you!"

My wife lay down on the couch and sank into thought.

"And how splendid, how enviable life might have been!" she said softly,
looking reflectively into the fire. "What a life it might have been!
There's no bringing it back now."

Any one who has lived in the country in winter and knows those long
dreary, still evenings when even the dogs are too bored to bark and even
the clocks seem weary of ticking, and any one who on such evenings has
been troubled by awakening conscience and has moved restlessly about,
trying now to smother his conscience, now to interpret it, will
understand the distraction and the pleasure my wife's voice gave me as
it sounded in the snug little room, telling me I was a bad man. I did
not understand what was wanted of me by my conscience, and my wife,
translating it in her feminine way, made clear to me in the meaning of
my agitation. As often before in the moments of intense uneasiness, I
guessed that the whole secret lay, not in the starving peasants, but in