What he wanted, he was drawn bolt upright as if by an inner shout, was
an assurance that could be depended on, that wouldn't break and break
and leave him nothing but a feeling of inscrutable mockery. He wanted
to understand himself, and, in that, Fanny and the children ... and
Savina. Obviously they were all bound together in one destiny, by a
single cause. Why had he stopped loving Fanny and had no regret--but a
sharp gladness--in his adultery with Savina? He discarded the
qualifying word as soon as it had occurred to him: there was no
adultery, adulteration, in his act with Savina; it had filled him with
an energy, a mental and nervous vigor, long denied to the sanctified
bed of marriage. He wanted not even to be justified, but only an
explanation of what he was; and he waited, his hands pressed into the
softness of the mattress on either side of him, as if the salvation of
some reply might come into his aching brain. Nothing, of course, broke
the deep reasonable stillness of the night. He slipped back on his
pillow weary and baffled.
There, to defraud his misery, he deliberately summoned the memory of
Savina, and of delirious hours. She came swiftly, with convulsive
shoulders, fingers drawn down over his body; he heard her little cry,
"Ah!" How changed her voice had been when she said, "I love you." It
had had no apparent connection with the moment, their actual passion.
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