about myself. Oh, my
God! I was to blame, I wounded her, but can it have been easier to
die than to forgive? That's typical feminine logic--cruel, merciless
logic. Oh, even then when she was living she was cruel! I recall
it all now! It's all clear to me now!"

As the examining magistrate talked he shrugged his shoulders, then
clutched at his head. He got back into the carriage, then walked
again. The new idea the doctor had imparted to him seemed to have
overwhelmed him, to have poisoned him; he was distracted, shattered
in body and soul, and when he got back to the town he said good-bye
to the doctor, declining to stay to dinner though he had promised
the doctor the evening before to dine with him.

BETROTHED

I

IT was ten o'clock in the evening and the full moon was shining
over the garden. In the Shumins' house an evening service celebrated
at the request of the grandmother, Marfa Mihalovna, was just over,
and now Nadya--she had gone into the garden for a minute--could
see the table being laid for supper in the dining-room, and her
grandmother bustling about in her gorgeous silk dress; Father Andrey,
a chief priest of the cathedral, was talking to Nadya's mother,
Nina Ivanovna, and now in the evening light through the window her
mother for some reason looked very young; Andrey Andreitch, Father
Andrey's son, was standing by listening attentively.

It was still and cool in the garden, and dark peaceful shadows lay
on the ground. There was a sound of frogs croaking, far, far away
beyond the town. There was a feeling of May, sweet May! One drew
deep breaths and longed to fancy that not here but far away under
the sky, above the trees, far away in the open country, in the
fields and the woods, the life of spring was unfolding now, mysterious,
lovely, rich and holy beyond the understanding of weak, sinful man.
And for some reason one wanted to cry.

She, Nadya, was already twenty-three. Ever since she was sixteen
she had been passionately dreaming of marriage and at last she was
engaged to Andrey Andreitch, the young man who was standing on the
other side of the window; she liked him, the wedding was already
fixed for July 7, and yet there was no joy in her heart, she was
sleeping badly, her spirits drooped. . . . She could hear from the
open windows of the basement where the kitchen was the hurrying
servants, the clatter of knives, the banging of the swing door;
there was a smell of roast turkey and pickled