ch thoughts.'

"And she did not lie. She believed what she said. She hoped by her words
to provoke in herself a contempt for him, and thereby to defend herself.
But she did not succeed. Everything was directed against her, especially
that abominable music. So ended the quarrel, and on Sunday our guests
came, and Troukhatchevsky and my wife again played together."

CHAPTER XXIII.

"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
violin and the arrangement of the scores. I remember then how th