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
my not being the sort of a man I ought to be.

My wife got up with an effort and came up to me.

"Pavel Andreitch," she said, smiling mournfully, "forgive me, I don't
believe you: you are not going away, but I will ask you one more favour.
Call this"--she pointed to her papers--"self-deception, feminine logic,
a mistake, as you like; but do not hinder me. It's all that is left me
in life." She turned away and paused. "Before this I had nothing. I have
wasted my youth in fighting with you. Now I have caught at this and am
living; I am happy.... It seems to me that I have found in this a means
of justifying my existence."

"Natalie, you are a good woman, a woman of ideas," I said, looking at my
wife enthusiastically, "and everything you say and do is intelligent and
fine."

I walked about the room to conceal my emotion.

"Natalie," I went on a minute later, "before I go away, I beg of you as
a special favour, help me to do something for the starving peasants!"

"What can I do?" said my wife, shrugging her shoulders. "Here's the
subscription list."

She rummaged among the papers and found the subscription list.

"Subscribe some money," she said, and from her tone I could see that she
did not attach great importance to her subscription list; "that is the
only way in which you can take part in the work."

I took the list and wrote: "Anonymou