XXVI
At the end of two weeks, while Lopukhóf was sitting in the counting-room of his factory, Viéra Pavlovna was spending the whole morning in extraordinary excitement. She threw herself down on her bed, she covered her face with her hands; and at the end of a quarter of an hour she jumped up, walked up and down the room, threw herself into one chair after another, and again walked with quick, unsteady steps, and then again threw herself on her bed, and then walked again; and several times she went to the writing-desk, and stood by it, and turned away, and finally she sat down, wrote a few words, sealed her note. Then, in half an hour, she seized the note, tore it up, burned it, and again she walked about excitedly. She wrote a second letter; this, also, she tore up and burned. Again she walked up and down, and again she wrote, and hastily, scarcely stopping to seal it; not giving herself time to write the address, she ran off with it to her husband’s room, threw it on the table, and hurried back to her own room, fell into a chair, and sat motionless, hiding her face in her hands, half an hour, possibly an hour. There is the sound of the bell; it is he. She ran into the library to seize the letter, to tear it up, to burn it—but where is it? It is not there! where is it? She hastily looked over the papers; where is it? But Masha is already opening the door, and Lopukhóf saw from the threshold how Viéra Pavlovna flashed out from his library into her own room, excited and pale.
He did not follow her, but went straight into his library; coolly, at his leisure, he examined the table and the space behind the table. Yes; he had been expecting for some days some such thing, either in the way of words or note. Nu, here it is, a letter without address, but her seal; nu, she must have been looking for it, so as to destroy it, or she may have just thrown it down. No, she must have been looking for it; the papers are in disorder. But how could she find it, while in throwing it down she had been in such a flurry of excitement that, in being thrown impetuously down, like a coal burning the hand, it slid across the whole width of the table, and fell on the window behind the table? There is hardly need of reading it; the contents are what he expects. However, it is impossible not to read it.
“My dear,53 never was I so strongly attached to thee as I am now. If I could only die for thy sake! Oh, how happy I would be to die, if it would only make thee happier! but I cannot live without him. I wrong thee, my dear; I am killing thee, my dear.54 I do not want to do so; I am acting contrary to my will. Forgive me! forgive me!”
For quarter of an hour, maybe more, Lopukhóf stood before the table, looking attentively down at the arm of the chair. Though it was a shock foreseen, still it was painful; though he had thought it all over, and decided what should be done, and how it was necessary to act, in case such a letter or confession came, still he could not at once collect his thoughts. But at last he collected them. He went into the kitchen to give an order to Masha.
“Masha, you will please not set the table until I tell you. I am not quite well, and I must take some medicine before dinner. But don’t you wait; eat your dinner, and don’t hurry: you will have plenty of time before I shall want mine. I will tell when.”
From the kitchen he went to see his wife. She was lying down, hiding her face in the pillows; when he entered, she shuddered:—
“You found it, you read it! bozhe moï! how crazy I am! It is not true—what I wrote! it was fever!”
“Of course, my dear;55 your words must not be taken seriously, because you were too much excited. These things are not so easily decided. We shall have time to talk this matter over more than once, calmly, rationally, because it is a very important matter for us. And, meanwhile, my dear,
