When Alekseï Aleksandrovitch made up his mind that he must have a talk with his wife, it seemed to him very simple and natural; but now, as he reflected, it occurred to him that the matter was complicated and perplexing.
Alekseï Aleksandrovitch was not jealous. Jealousy in his opinion was insulting to a wife, and a husband should trust in her. But he did not ask himself why one should trust her, that is to say, why a man should expect a young wife always to love him.
But he had not felt any lack of confidence simply because he trusted her, and said to himself that it was the proper thing to do. But now, although it was his conviction that jealousy is a disgusting state of mind, and that it was his duty to trust his wife and that his faith was still intact, yet he felt that he was placed in an illogical and ridiculous position, and he knew not what he ought to do.
Alekseï Aleksandrovitch was now standing face to face with life, with the possibility that his wife was in love with some one else besides him, and this seemed to him very senseless and incomprehensible, because it was life itself. All his life he had lived and labored in a round of official duties concerned with the reflections of life. And whenever he came in contact with life itself he was revolted by it. Now he experienced a sensation such as a man feels, who, passing calmly over a bridge above a precipice, suddenly discovers that the arch is broken, and that the abyss yawns beneath his feet.
This abyss was actual life; the bridge—the artificial life which he had been living. The idea that his wife could love another man occurred to him for the first time, and filled him with terror.
Without undressing, he kept walking back and forth with regular steps: over the echoing parquetry floor of the dining-room lighted with a single burner; over the carpet of the dark drawing-room, where the light fell on his recently painted full-length portrait, over the divan; and then through his wife's boudoir, where two candles were
