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He noticed this, rubbed his forehead, and sat down in her

boudoir.

There, looking at her table, with the malachite blotting case

lying at the top and an unfinished letter, his thoughts suddenly

changed. He began to think of her, of what she was thinking and

feeling. For the first time he pictured vividly to himself her

personal life, her ideas, her desires, and the idea that she

could and should have a separate life of her own seemed to him so

alarming that he made haste to dispel it. It was the chasm which

he was afraid to peep into. To put himself in thought and feeling

in another person's place was a spiritual exercise not natural to

Alexey Alexandrovitch. He looked on this spiritual exercise as a

harmful and dangerous abuse of the fancy.