eight o'clock in the morning, not in his wife's chamber, but in his library, on a leather-covered divan. He turned his portly pampered body on the springs of the divan, as if intending to go to sleep again, and as he did so threw his arm round the cushion and pressed his cheek to it. But suddenly he sat up and opened his eyes.
"Well, well! how was it?" he mused, recalling a dream. "Yes, how was it? Yes! Alabin was giving a dinner at Darmstadt; no, not at Darmstadt, but it was something American. Yes, but that Darmstadt was in America. Yes, Alabin was giving a dinner on glass tables, yes, and the tables sang 'Il mio tesoro'; no, not 'Il mio tesoro,' but something better; and some little water-bottles, they were women!" said he, continuing his recollections.
Prince Stepan's eyes flashed gayly and he smiled as he said to himself:—
"Yes, it was very good, very good. There was something extremely elegant about it, but you can't tell it in words, and when you are awake you can't express the reality even in thought."
Then, as he noticed a ray of sunlight which came in at the side of one of the heavy window-curtains, he gayly set his feet down from the divan, found his gilt morocco slippers—they had been embroidered for him by his wife the year before as a birthday present—and, according to an old custom which he had kept up for nine years, he, without rising, stretched out his hand to the place where in his chamber hung his dressing-gown. And then he suddenly remembered how and why he had been sleeping, not in his wife's chamber, but in the library; the smile vanished from his face and he frowned.
"Akh! akh! akh! akh!" he groaned, as he recollected everything that had occurred. And before his mind arose once more all the details of the quarrel with his wife, all the hopelessness of his situation, and most lamentable of all, his own fault.
"No! she will not and she cannot forgive me. And what is the worst of it, 't was my own fault—my own fault, and yet I am not to blame. In that lies all the
