is so cold to me?⁠ ⁠… not cold exactly, he loves me, I know that! But something new is drawing us apart now. Why wasn’t he here all the evening? He told Stiva to say he could not leave Yashvin, and must watch over his play. Is Yashvin a child? But supposing it’s true. He never tells a lie. But there’s something else in it if it’s true. He is glad of an opportunity of showing me that he has other duties; I know that, I submit to that. But why prove that to me? He wants to show me that his love for me is not to interfere with his freedom. But I need no proofs, I need love. He ought to understand all the bitterness of this life for me here in Moscow. Is this life? I am not living, but waiting for an event, which is continually put off and put off. No answer again! And Stiva says he cannot go to Alexey Alexandrovitch. And I can’t write again. I can do nothing, can begin nothing, can alter nothing; I hold myself in, I wait, inventing amusements for myself⁠—the English family, writing, reading⁠—but it’s all nothing but a sham, it’s all the same as morphine. He ought to feel for me,” she said, feeling tears of self-pity coming into her eyes.