I been tormented thus,' I said to myself (I recalled former similar fits of jealousy) 'and then it all ended in nothing. It may be thus even now, and I am sure I shall find her quietly asleep; she will wake up, will be glad to see me, and from her words and looks I shall feel that nothing has happened, and that all this is nonsense. Oh, how good it would be!'—'No, this has happened too often, and will not be so now,' a certain voice told me, and again it started. That is where the punishment was! Not to a syphilitic hospital would I take a young man in order to cure him of his desire for woman, but into my soul, to look at those devils that were tearing it to pieces! What was terrible was that I arrogated to myself the unquestioned, full right over her body, as though it were my own body, and at the same time felt that I could not rule over this body, that it was not mine, and that she could dispose of it as she wished, and wished to dispose of it differently from what I wanted her to. And I could do nothing to her or to him. He, like Vánka, the steward of the fable, will sing before the gibbet a song of having kissed the sugared lips, and so forth, and his will be the victory. Still less can I do anything with her. If she did not do it, but wished to do it,—and I know that she does want to,—it is even worse. It would be better if she did do it, and I should know,—there would be no uncertainty. I could not tell what it was I wanted. I wanted her not to wish for that which she could not help wishing for. This was complete insanity!
