de
from my uneasiness in this little room beside my wife. I sat down
and screened away the light from my eyes with my hand.... There was a
stillness.

"How are you to blame?" my wife said after a long silence, looking at me
with red eyes that gleamed with tears. "You are very well educated and
very well bred, very honest, just, and high-principled, but in you
the effect of all that is that wherever you go you bring suffocation,
oppression, something insulting and humiliating to the utmost degree.
You have a straightforward way of looking at things, and so you hate
the whole world. You hate those who have faith, because faith is an
expression of ignorance and lack of culture, and at the same time you
hate those who have no faith for having no faith and no ideals; you hate
old people for being conservative and behind the times, and young people
for free-thinking. The interests of the peasantry and of Russia are dear
to you, and so you hate the peasants because you suspect every one of
them of being a thief and a robber. You hate every one. You are just,
and always take your stand on your legal rights, and so you are always
at law with the peasants and your neighbours. You have had twenty
bushels of rye stolen, and your love of order has made you complain of
the peasants to the Governor and all the local authorities, and to send
a complaint of the local authorities to Petersburg. Legal justice!" said
my wife, and she laughed. "On the ground of your legal rights and in
the interests of morality, you refuse to give me a passport. Law and
morality is such that a self-respecting healthy young woman has to spend
her life in idleness, in depression, and in continual apprehension, and
to receive in return board and lodging from a man she does not love. You
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