re's no
correcting it now. I must look at it philosophically. She married
me without love, stupidly, perhaps with mercenary motives, but
without understanding, and now she evidently sees her mistake and
is miserable. I see it. At night we sleep together, but by day she
is afraid to be left alone with me for five minutes, and tries to
find distraction, society. With me she feels ashamed and frightened."

"And yet she takes money from you?"

"That's stupid, Polina!" cried Laptev. "She takes money from me
because it makes absolutely no difference to her whether she has
it or not. She is an honest, pure girl. She married me simply because
she wanted to get away from her father, that's all."

"And are you sure she would have married you if you had not been
rich?" asked Polina.

"I'm not sure of anything," said Laptev dejectedly. "Not of anything.
I don't understand anything. For God's sake, Polina, don't let us
talk about it."

"Do you love her?"

"Desperately."

A silence followed. She drank a fourth glass, while he paced up and
down, thinking that by now his wife was probably having supper at
the doctors' club.

"But is it possible to love without knowing why?" asked Polina,
shrugging her shoulders. "No; it's the promptings of animal passion!
You are poisoned, intoxicated by that beautiful body, that _reinheit!_
Go away from me; you are unclean! Go to her!"

She brandished her hand at him, then took up his hat and hurled it
at him. He put on his fur coat without speaking and went out, but
she ran after him into the passage, clutched his arm above the
elbow, and broke into sobs.

"Hush, Polina! Don't!" he said, and could not unclasp her fingers.
"Calm yourself, I entreat you."

She shut her eyes and turned pale, and her long nose became an
unpleasant waxy colour like a corpse's, and Laptev still could not
unclasp her fingers. She had fainted. He lifted her up carefully,
laid her on her bed, and sat by her for ten minutes till she came
to herself. Her hands were cold, her pulse was weak and uneven.

"Go home," she said, opening her eyes. "Go away, or I shall begin
howling again. I must take myself in hand."

When he came out, instead of going to the doctors' club where his
friends were expecting him, he went home. All the way home he was
asking himself reproachfully why he had not settled down to married
life with that woman who loved him so much, and was in reality his
wife and friend. She was the one hum