“Yes,” I said, “family life is a duty. I agree with you. And therefore you are acquitting yourself of this duty for the second time?”
“Yes, for the second time. I am fond of family life in general. To be a bachelor or a widower is only half a life for me. Whatever you may say, gentlemen, wedlock is a great thing!”
“Certainly … even when the husband is almost three times as old as his wife?”
Urbenin blushed. The hand that was lifting a spoonful of soup to his mouth trembled, and the soup was pouring again into the plate.
“I understand what you want to say, Sergei Petrovich,” he mumbled. “I thank you for your frankness. I ask myself: Is it not mean? I suffer! But where has one time to question oneself, to settle various questions when every moment one feels happy, when one forgets one's age, ugliness … the whole homo sum, Sergei Petrovich! And when for a second, thoughts run through my pate of the inequality of years, I don't break my head for an answer, but calm myself as well as I can. I think I have made Olga happy. I have given her a father and my children a mother. Besides, all this is like a novel, and my head feels giddy. It was wrong to make me drink sherry.”
Urbenin rose, wiped his face with his napkin, and sat down again. A minute later he gulped down another glass of sherry and looked at me for a long time with an imploring glance as if he were begging me for mercy, and suddenly his shoulders began to shake, and quite unexpectedly he burst into sobs like a boy.
“It's nothing … nothing!” he mumbled, trying to master his sobs. “Don't be uneasy. After your words my heart grew sick with a strange foreboding. But it is nothing.”
Urbenin's foreboding was realized, realized so soon that I have not time to change my pen and begin a new page. From the next chapter my calm muse will change the expression of calmness on her face for one of passion and affliction. The introduction is finished and the drama begins.
The criminal will of man enters upon its rights.