"But what are you talking about?" he said, horrified at her
expression of despair, and again bending over her, he took her
hand and kissed it. "What is it for? Do I seek amusements
outside our home? Don't I avoid the society of women?"
"Well, yes! If that were all!" she said.
"Come, tell me what I ought to do to give you peace of mind? I
am ready to do anything to make you happy," he said, touched by
her expression of despair; "what wouldn't I do to save you from
distress of any sort, as now, Anna!" he said.
"It's nothing, nothing!" she said. "I don't know myself whether
it's the solitary life, my nerves.... Come, don't let us talk
of it. What about the race? You haven't told me!" she inquired,
trying to conceal her triumph at the victory, which had anyway
been on her side.
He asked for supper, and began telling her about the races; but
in his tone, in his eyes, which became more and more cold, she
saw that he did not forgive her for her victory, that the feeling
of obstinacy with which she had been struggling had asserted
itself again in him. He was colder to her than before, as though
he were regretting his surrender. And she, remembering the words
that had given her the victory, "how I feel on the brink of
calamity, how afraid I am of myself," saw that this weapon was a
dangerous one, and that it could not be used a second time. And
she felt that beside the love that bound them together there had
grown up between them some evil spirit of strife, which she could
not exorcise from his, and still less from her own heart.