I got out at every station to divert my mind. At one station I saw some people drinking, and I immediately drank some vodka. Beside me stood a Jew who was also drinking. He began to talk, and to avoid being alone in my carriage I went with him into his dirty third class carriage reeking with smoke and bespattered with shells of sunflower seeds. There I sat down beside him and he chattered a great deal and told anecdotes. I listened to him, but could not take in what he was saying because I continued to think about my own affairs. He noticed this and demanded my attention. Then I rose and went back to my carriage. ‘I must think it over,’ I said to myself. ‘Is what I suspect true, and is there any reason for me to suffer?’ I sat down, wishing to think it over calmly, but immediately, instead of calm reflection, the same thing began again: Instead of reflection, pictures and fancies. ‘How often I have suffered like this,’ I said to myself (recalling former similar attacks of jealousy), ‘and afterwards it all ended in nothing. So it will be now perhaps, yes certainly it will. I shall find her calmly asleep, she will wake up, be pleased to see me, and by her words and looks I shall know that there has been nothing and that this is all nonsense. Oh, how good that would be!