tragedy of it," he said to himself. "Akh! akh! akh!" he kept murmuring in his despair, as he thought over the exceedingly unpleasant consequences that would result to him from this quarrel.
The most disagreeable moment was at the very first, when, as he came home from the theater, happy and self-satisfied, bringing a monstrous pear for his wife, he did not find her in the sitting-room, nor, to his surprise, was she in the library, and at last he saw her in her chamber holding the fatal, all-revealing letter in her hand.
She—Dolly, that forever busy and fussy and foolish creature as he always considered her—was sitting motionless with the note in her hand, and looked at him with an expression of terror, despair, and wrath.
"What is this? This?" she demanded, pointing to the note.
And as often happens, Stepan's torment at this recollection was caused less by the fact itself than by the answer which he gave to those words of his wife. His experience at that moment was the same as other people have had when unexpectedly detected in some shameful deed. He was unable to prepare his face for the situation caused by his wife's discovery of his sin. Instead of getting offended, denying it, justifying himself, asking forgiveness, or even showing indifference—anything would have been better than what he really did—in spite of himself (by a reflex action of the brain as Stepan Arkadyevitch explained it, for he loved Physiology) absolutely in spite of himself he suddenly smiled with his ordinary good-humored and therefore stupid smile.
He could not forgive himself for that stupid smile. When Dolly saw that smile, she trembled as with physical pain, poured forth a torrent of bitter words, quite in accordance with her natural temper, and fled from the room. Since that time she had not been willing to see her husband.
"That stupid smile caused the whole trouble," thought Stepan Arkadyevitch.
"But what is to be done about it, what is to be done?" he asked himself in despair, and found no answer.
