ion of the Senate, and his determination to
follow her; when he recalled his relinquishment of his right to the
land, there suddenly appeared before him, as if in answer to these
questions, the face of Mariette; her sigh and glance when she said,
"When will I see you again?" and her smile--all so distinct that she
seemed to stand before him, and he smiled himself. "Would it be proper
for me to follow her to Siberia? And would it be proper to deprive
myself of my property?" he asked himself.

And the answers to these questions on that bright St. Petersburg night
were indefinite. His mind was all in confusion. He called forth his
former trend of thought, but those thoughts had lost their former
power of conviction.

"And what if all my ideas are due to an over-wrought imagination, and
I should be unable to live up to them? If I should repent of what I
have done?" he asked himself, and, being unable to find answers to
these questions, he was stricken with such sadness and despair as he
had rarely experienced before, and he fell into that deep slumber
which had been habitual with him after heavy losses at cards.

CHAPTER XVI.

Nekhludoff's first feeling on rising the following morning was that he
had committed something abominable the preceding evening.

He began to recall what had happened. There was nothing abominable; he
had done nothing wrong. He had only thought that all his present
intentions--that of marrying Katiousha, giving the land to the
peasants--artificial, unnatural, and that he must continued to live as
he had lived before.

He could recall no wrong act, but he remembered what was worse than a
wrong act--there were the bad thoughts in which all bad acts have
their origin. Bad acts may not be repeated; one may repent of them,
while bad thoughts give birth to bad acts.

A bad act only smooths the way to other bad acts, while bad thoughts
irresistibly lead toward them.

Recalling his thoughts of the day before, Nekhludoff wondered how he
could have believed them. How so novel and difficult might be that
which he intended to do, he knew that it was the only life possible to
him now, and that, however easy it might be for him to return to his
old mode of life, he knew that that was death, not life. This
temptation of the day before was similar to that of a man who, after a
night's sound sleep, feels like taking his ease on the soft mattress
for a while, although he knows that it is time to be up