"I think that it is superfluous to say that I was very vain. If one
has no vanity in this life of ours, there is no sufficient reason for
living. So for that Sunday I had busied myself in tastefully arranging
things for the dinner and the musical soiree. I had purchased myself
numerous things for the dinner, and had chosen the guests. Toward six
o'clock they arrived, and after them Troukhatchevsky, in his dress-coat,
with diamond shirt-studs, in bad taste. He bore himself with ease. To
all questions he responded promptly, with a smile of contentment and
understanding, and that peculiar expression which was intended to
mean: 'All that you may do and say will be exactly what I expected.'
Everything about him that was not correct I now noticed with especial
pleasure, for it all tended to tranquillize me, and prove to me that to
my wife he stood in such a degree of inferiority that, as she had
told me, she could not stoop to his level. Less because of my wife's
assurances than because of the atrocious sufferings which I felt in
jealousy, I no longer allowed myself to be jealous.

"In spite of that, I was not at ease with the musician or with her
during dinner-time and the time that elapsed before the beginning of the
music. Involuntarily I followed each of their gestures and looks.
The dinner, like all dinners, was tiresome and conventional. Not long
afterward the music began. He went to get his violin; my wife advanced
to the piano, and rummaged among the scores. Oh, how well I remember all
the details of that evening! I remember how he brought the violin, how
he opened the box, took off the serge embroidered by a lady's hand, and
began to tune the instrument. I can still see my wife sit down, with a
false air of indifference, under which it was plain that she hid a great
timidity, a timidity that was especially due to her comparative lack
of musical knowledge. She sat down with that false air in front of the
piano, and then began the usual preliminaries,--the pizzicati of the