' Are you bored ? ' she said, and in her voice was a tone of question and of doubt.
' Bored !' he thought, ' the word is found! Yes, it's terrible deadly boredom! that's the worm which has been gnawing at my heart for months. Good God, what am I to do? and she talks of love, of marriage. How can I undeceive her!'
She sat down to the piano and began to play some of his favourite pieces. He did not listen, but kept thinking his own thoughts.
Julia let her hands fall. She sighed, wrapped herself in a shawl, and flung herself into the other corner of the sofa, and from there watched Alexandr with mournful eyes.
He took up his hat.
' Where are you going ? ' she said with surprise.
' Home/'
' It is not eleven o'clock yet.'
' I have to write to mamma; I haven't written to her for a long while.'
' A long while! you wrote the day before yesterday.' He did not speak ; there was nothing for him to say. He really had written and had incidentally mentioned it to her at the time, but had forgotten it; but love does not forget the smallest detail. In the eyes of love everything which relates to the beloved object is a fact of importance. A complex web is woven in a lover's mind from observations, subtle imaginations, recollections, and surmises about everything which surrounds the beloved, which takes place in his sphere, or has any bearing upon him. One word, a hint—no need of a hint! a glance, a scarcely perceptible movement of the lips—is enough for love to found a conjecture on, then to pass from it to imagination, and thence to a decisive conclusion, and then to suffer torture or to be blissful in his own thoughts. The logic of lovers, sometimes false, sometimes amazingly correct, quickly builds up an edifice of conjectures and suspicions, but the strength of love still more quickly levels it to the ground; often a single
smile is enough for this, a tear, two or three words, and the suspicions are gone.
This kind of supervision there is no means of lulling to sleep or deceiving. The lover at one time suddenly takes some idea into his head which no one else would have thought of in his wildest dreams, at another time he fails to see what is taking place under his nose ; at one time acute to clairvoyance, at another_shor>sighted to blindness.,
Julia leaped up from the sofa, like a cat and seized him by the hand.
'What does it mean? where are you going?' she asked.
' Nothing, nothing, I assure you; there, I simply want to go to bed; I have had too little sleep lately: that's all'
'Too little sleep! when you told me only this morning that you had had nine hours' sleep, and that you even had a headache from too much sleep ? '
Unlucky again.
'Well, my head does ache,' he said, a little taken aback, ' and that's why I am going.'
' But after dinner you said your headache had gone.'
' Good Heavens, what a memory you have ! It's unbearable ! Very well, I simply want to go home.'
' Aren't you comfortable here ? What have you there, at home?'
Looking him in the eyes, she shook her head incredulously. He succeeded somehow in quieting her and went away.
' What if I don't go to Julia's to-day ? ' was the question Alexandr put to himself when he waked up the next morning.
He paced three times up and down the room. ' I declare I won't go !' he announced resolutely.
'Yevsay, bring me my things.' And he went out to stroll about the town.
' How nice, how jolly it is to be walking alone!' he thought; ' to go wherever one pleases, to stop to read the sign-boards, to look into the shop windows, to walk to and fro—it's really very pleasant! Freedom is a precious thing! Yes ! that's just it; freedom in a broad high sense means —walking alone !'
He tapped with his stick on the pavement, and gaily
greeted his acquaintance. As he walked down the Morskaya Street, he saw a face he knew at the window of one of the houses. His acquaintance beckoned to him to come in. He looked and saw it was the Duomo and went in, dined there and stayed till the evening; in the evening he set off for the theatre and from the theatre to supper. He tried not to remember home at all; he knew what was awaiting him there.
As he anticipated on his return he found some half-a-dozen notes on the table and a page asleep in the hall. The boy had been ordered not to go away till he had seen him. The notes were full of reproaches, questions and traces of tears. The next day he had to go and make his excuses. He talked about business at the office. They arrived at some sort of a reconciliation.
Every three days, the same thing was repeated in one direction or another. And so again and again. Julia began to grow thinner, never went out and saw no one, but she said nothing, for Alexandr was irritated by reproaches.
A fortnight later Alexandr had arranged to spend the day with friends, but in the morning he received a note from Julia, begging him to spend the whole day with her and to come rather earlier. She wrote that she was ill and in low spirits, that her nerves were out of order, &c. He was irritated; however, he went to inform her that he could not stay with her, that he had a lot of business to attend to.
'Oh, of course: a dinner at the theatre, tobogganing— very important business,' she said languidly.
' What does that mean ? ' he asked, with annoyance; ' so, you spy upon me, it seems; that I won't put up with.'
He got up and was going.
' Stop a minute, listen !' she said, ' I have something to say.'
' Fve no time.'
' One minute; sit down.'
Unwillingly he sat down on the edge of a chair.
Clasping her hands she gazed uneasily at him, as though she were trying first to read on his face the answer to what she wanted to ask.
He writhed in his seat from impatience.
' Make haste! I've no time to spare!' drily.
She sighed. *
' You don't love me then ? * she asked, with a slight movement of the head.
'The old story!' he said, stroking his hat with his hands.
' How sick you are of it!' she answered.
He got up and with rapid strides began to walk up and down the room. In an instant a sob was heard.
' That is all that was wanting!' he said almost violently, standing still near her, ' you have tortured me enough !'
u I torture you !' she cried, and sobbed the more.
'It's unendurable!' said Alexandr, getting ready to
go.
' There, I won't, I won't!' she said, hurriedly wiping away her tears; ' see, I am not crying, only don't go away, sit down.'
^Sne tried to smile, but the tears would still trickle down her cheeks. Alexandr felt sorry for her. He sat down and swung his legs. He began to put question after question to / himself, and arrived at the conclusion that h e had grown ^ L cold and did not l o ve Ju lia. But why ? God only knows! She loved him more passionately every day; was it not because of that ? Good Heavens, what an irony of fate! All the conditions of happiness were there. There was no obstacle to hinder them, there was not even any other feeling to draw him away, yet he had grown cold! Oh, life ! But how should he soothe Julia ? Was he to sacrifice himself? to drag through a long wearisome existence with her; to play a part he could not, but not to play a part would mean every minute to see tears, to hear reproaches, to torture her and himself. .... Should he begin to explain to her at once his uncle's theories about the changeable nature of the feelings—a likely idea! she was weeping already, when she knew nothing—but there! What was to be done ?
Julia, seeing that he did not speak, took his hand and gazed into his eyes. He slowly turned away and gently
