to me as she meets me. I imagine that she is pacified, and I begin to tell her how her reproaches provoked me. She says with the same stern and terribly drawn face that she has come not to make explanations, but to take the children away, that we cannot live together. I tell her that it was not my fault, that she made me lose my patience. She looks sternly and solemnly at me, and then says: 'Don't speak another word, or you will regret it!' I say to her that I can't now stand any comedy. She shouts something which I cannot make out and runs to her room. The key rings out after her: she has locked herself in. I push the door,—there is no answer, and I go away in fury. Half an hour later Líza comes to me in tears.—'What, what is the matter?'—'We do not hear mamma.'—We go there. I jerk the door with all my might. The bolt is not well fastened, and both halves of the door come open. I walk up to the bed. She is lying uncomfortably on her bed, in her skirts and high shoes. On the table is an empty opium bottle. We bring her back to her senses. Tears, and, at last, we make up. We do not make up: in the soul of each is the same malice toward the other, with the addition of irritation for the pain inflicted by this quarrel, which one puts to the account of the other. But it has to be ended in some way, and life proceeds as of old.
"It was quarrels of this kind, and even worse quarrels that we had all the time,—once a week, or once a month, and, at times, even every day. And it was all the time the same. Once I went so far as to provide myself with a passport for abroad,—the quarrel had lasted two days. But after that there was again a semblance of an explanation, a patched-up peace,—and I remained.
