"It is late. I am going to sleep."
She got up. The lamp, which she set on the mantelpiece, lit up the room.
She trembled. She seemed to be in a dream and not to know how to yield to the dream. Then she raised her arm and took the pins out of her hair. It fell down her back and looked, in the night, as if it were lit by the setting sun.
The man made a sudden movement and looked at her in surprise. Not a word.
She removed a gold brooch from the top of her blouse, and a bit of her bosom appeared.
"What are you doing, Anna, what are you doing?"
"Why, undressing."
She wanted to say this in a natural voice, but had not succeeded. He replied with an inarticulate exclamation, a cry from his heart, which was touched to the quick. Stupefaction, desperate regret, and also the flash of an inconceivable hope agitated him, oppressed him.
"You are my husband."
"Oh," he said, "you know I am nothing." He spoke feebly in a tragic tone. "Married for form's sake," he went on, stammering out fragmentary, incoherent phrases. "I knew it, I knew it—formality—our conventions—"