Leo Tolstoy

“ No one should look at him so long, except myself. I glanced at my husband, his eyes laughed as they rested on mine, and it was long since I had met his with such happy joy.
This day ended my romance with my husband. The old love remained, and the dear remembrance of what could never come back to me; but a new love for my children and my children's father, began another life and another way of happiness, up to this hour unending ... for at last I know that in home, and in the pure joys of home will be found real happiness! ”

“ In the meantime, the cloud, without any wind, had crept slowly and stealthily above our heads; nature was yet more perfectly tranquil, sweet, and still: suddenly one drop fell, and, so to speak, rebounded, upon the linen of the awning, another rolled, a growing ball of dust, along the path; then, with a sound like deadened hail, came the heavy dash of rain, gathering force every moment. At once, as if by concert, frog's and nightingales were silent ”

“ I put my hand on the wet slippery rail, and leaned forward into the rain, the cool drops falling lightly on my hair and neck. The cloud, brightening and thinning, scattered in shining spray above us, the regular beat of the shower was succeeded by the sound of heavy drops falling more and more rarely from the sky or from the trees. The frogs resumed their croaking, the nightingales shook their wings and began again to respond to each other from behind the glistening shrubs, now on one side, now on another. All was serene again before us.
"How good it is to live!" ”

“ To me, too, life is good," said I, " and it is precisely because it is so good to me, that I am sad. I feel so detached, so incomplete; I am always wanting some other thing, and yet everything here is so good, so tranquil! Can it be possible that for you no sorrow ever seems mingled with your pleasure in life? ”

“ Spring came. Macha and Sonia returned to the country for the summer; and as Nikolski was undergoing repairs, we went with them to Pokrovski. The same old home, the terrace, the out-of-door tea-table, the piano in the half-lighted room, my own old chamber with its white curtains, and the girlish dreams which seemed to have been left behind there, forgotten. ”

“ Yes," he said, as if pursuing his own thoughts, " for all of us, and particularly for you women, it is necessary that we should ourselves lift to our own lips the cup of the vanities of life, before we can taste life itself; no one believes the experience of others. ”

“ Do not let us try to repeat life," he went on, " nor to lie to ourselves. But it is something, to have no longer, God willing, either disquiet or distress. We have nothing to seek for. We have already found, already shared, happiness enough. All we have to do now is to open the way, you see to whom ..." he said, pointing out little Vania, in his nurse's arms, at the terrace door. " That is necessary, dear love," he concluded, bending over me and dropping a kiss on my hair. ”

“ Even as I asked the question I felt the answer, felt that my wish was no longer possible to realize. He smiled; it seemed to me an old man's smile, gentle and full of peace.
" How young you still are, and how old I am already!" he said. " Why delude ourselves?" ”

“ I do not know what you have to reproach me with, except that I do not love you as I used to do!"
" As you used to love me!..."! murmured under my handkerchief, drenching it with bitter tears.
" And for that, time and ourselves are equally guilty. For each period there is one suitable phase of love..."
He was silent.
"And shall I tell you the whole truth, since you desire frankness? Just as, during that first year of our acquaintance, I spent night after night without sleep, thinking of you and building up my own love, until it grew to fill all my heart, so in St. ”