I'm sorry for her. Aren't
we all flung into the world only to hate each other, and so to
torture ourselves and each other? Schoolboys coming--laughing
Seryozha?" she thought. "I thought, too, that I loved him, and
used to be touched by my own tenderness. But I have lived
without him, I gave him up for another love, and did not regret
the exchange till that love was satisfied." And with loathing
she thought of what she meant by that love. And the clearness
with which she saw life now, her own and all men's, was a
pleasure to her. "It's so with me and Pyotr, and the coachman,
Fyodor, and that merchant, and all the people living along the
Volga, where those placards invite one to go, and everywhere and
always," she thought when she had driven under the low-pitched
roof of the Nizhigorod station, and the porters ran to meet her.

"A ticket to Obiralovka?" said Pyotr.

She had utterly forgotten where and why she was going, and only
by a great effort she understood the question.

"Yes," she said, handing him her purse, and taking a little red
bag in her hand, she got out of the carriage.

Making her way through the crowd to the first-class waiting-room,
she gradually recollected all the details of her position, and
the plans between which she was hesitating. And again at the old
sore places, hope and then despair poisoned the wounds of her
tortured, fearfully throbbing heart. As she sat on the
star-shaped sofa waiting for the train, she gazed with aversion
at the people coming and going (they were all hateful to her),
and thought how she would arrive at the station, would write him
a note, and what she would write to him, and how he was at this
moment complaining to his mother of his position, not
understanding her sufferings, and how she would go into the room,
and what she would say to him. Then she thought that life might
still be happy, and how miserably she loved and hated him, and
how fearfully her heart was beating.

Chapter 31

A bell rang, some young men, ugly and impudent, and at the same
time careful of the impression they were making, hurried by.
Pyotr, too, crossed the room in his livery and top-boots, with
his dull, animal face, and came up to her to take her to the
train. Some noisy men were quiet as she passed them on the
platform, and one whispered something about her to another--
something vile, no doubt. She stepped up on the high step, and
sat down in a carriage by herself on a