The torments exhausted her. And then, thanks to the obliging doctors, she learned that it is possible to avoid having children. She was very glad, tried it, and became alive again for the one thing she knew⁠—for love. But love with a husband befouled by jealousy and all kinds of anger, was not longer the thing she wanted. She had visions of some other, clean, new love; at least I thought she had. And she began to look about her as if expecting something. I saw this and could not help feeling anxious. It happened again and again that while talking to me, as usual through other people⁠—that is, telling a third person what she meant for me⁠—she boldly, without remembering that she had expressed the opposite opinion an hour before, declared, though half-jokingly, that a mother’s cares are a fraud, and that it is not worth while to devote one’s life to children when one is young and can enjoy life. She gave less attention to the children, and less frenziedly than before, but gave more and more attention to herself, to her appearance (though she tried to conceal this), and to her pleasures, even to her accomplishments. She again enthusiastically took to the piano which she had quite abandoned, and it all began from that.”