whether there were still hope of reconciliation, whether she
should go away at once or see him once more. She was expecting
him the whole day, and in the evening, as she went to her own
room, leaving a message for him that her head ached, she said to
herself, "If he comes in spite of what the maid says, it means
that he loves me still. If not, it means that all is over, and
then I will decide what I'm to do!..."

In the evening she heard the rumbling of his carriage stop at the
entrance, his ring, his steps and his conversation with the
servant; he believed what was told him, did not care to find out
more, and went to his own room. So then everything was over.

And death rose clearly and vividly before her mind as the sole
means of bringing back love for her in his heart, of punishing
him and of gaining the victory in that strife which the evil
spirit in possession of her heart was waging with him.

Now nothing mattered: going or not going to Vozdvizhenskoe,
getting or not getting a divorce from her husband--all that did
not matter. The one thing that mattered was punishing him. When
she poured herself out her usual dose of opium, and thought that
she had only to drink off the whole bottle to die, it seemed to
her so simple and easy, that she began musing with enjoyment on
how he would suffer, and repent and love her memory when it would
be too late. She lay in bed with open eyes, by the light of a
single burned-down candle, gazing at the carved cornice of the
ceiling and at the shadow of the screen that covered part of it,
while she vividly pictured to herself how he would feel when she
would be no more, when she would be only a memory to him. "How
could I say such cruel things to her?" he would say. "How could
I go out of the room without saying anything to her? But now she
is no more. She has gone away from us forever. She is...."
Suddenly the shadow of the screen wavered, pounced on the whole
cornice, the whole ceiling; other shadows from the other side
swooped to meet it, for an instant the shadows flitted back, but
then with fresh swiftness they darted forward, wavered,
commingled, and all was darkness. "Death!" she thought. And
such horror came upon her that for a long while she could not
realize where she was, and for a long while her trembling hands
could not find the matches and light another candle, instead of
the one that had burned down and gone out. "No, anything--only
to live! Why, I l