"I'll end it when I think fit. You have deceived me shamefully. For you I have sacrificed all that a virtuous woman can bestow. It is your fault that I dare not look my husband in the face--my husband, the best and noblest man on earth. It's you who made me forget my duties as wife and mother. Oh, why, why did I not remain true to him!" Romashov could not, however, now refrain from a smile. Raisa Alexandrovna's innumerable amours with all the young, new-fledged officers in the regiment were an open secret, and both by word of mouth and in her letters to Romashov she was in the habit of referring to her "beloved husband" in the following terms: "my fool," or "that despicable creature," or "this booby who is always in the way," etc., etc. "Ah, you have even the impudence to laugh," she hissed; "but look out now, sir, it is my turn." With these words she took her partner's arm and tripped along, with swaying hips and smiling a vinegary smile on all sides. When the dance was over her face resumed its former expression of hatred. Again she began to buzz savagely--"like an angry wasp," thought Romashov. "I shall never forgive you this, do you hear? _Never._ I know the reason why you have thrown me over so shamelessly and in such a blackguardly fashion; but don't fondly imagine that a new love-intrigue will be successful. No; never, as long as I live, shall that be the case. Instead of acknowledging in a straightforward and honourable way that you no longer love me, you have preferred to cloak your treachery and treat me like a vulgar harlot, reasoning, I suppose, like this: 'If it does not come off with the other, I always have her, you know.' Ha! ha! ha!" "All right, you may perhaps allow me to speak decently," began Romashov, with restrained wrath. His face grew paler and paler, and he bit his lips nervously. "You have asked for it, and now I tell you straight. I do _not_ love you." "Oh, what an insult!" "I have never loved you; nor did you love me. We have both played an unworthy and false game, a miserable, vulgar farce with a nauseous plot and disgusting _rôles_. Raisa Alexandrovna, I have studied you, and I know you, very likely, better than you do yourself. You lack every requisite of love, tenderness, nay, even common affection. The cause of it is your absolutely superficial character, your narrow, petty outlook on life. And, besides" (Romashov happened to remember at this point Nasanski's words), "only elect, refined natures can know what a great or real love is." "Such elect, refined natures, for instance, as your own."