That was perhaps why she never got all worked up over her family, like the other women in the office, who went on and on about their wonderful children, who indulged in praising or abusing their husbands with an equal lack of moderation. Her own husband never gave her cause for such wild overstatements.

The only moments of respite in this continual state of nervous tension were on the evenings when Dimitri had another engagement. Alone on the underground, she gradually came to her senses. She saw herself as a victim of self-deception; she had been carried away by her imagination; she had built up a purely fictional image of the young man in her mind.

Expectation and remembrance, the future and the past, became invested with the same glamorous aura. She could no longer enjoy the present. And so her life went by, caught in this broken, anguished rhythm.

She looked at her fellow passengers and wondered whether they had pretty, well-kept homes waiting for them. But supposing they didn't, wouldn't they still long to get home - even if home meant no more than a hovel, a rented room - back to the place that was their goal, their destination, the place for the sake of which they made this daily journey on the train?

Everything seemed perfectly regulated, predetermined, as if taken care of by some invisible hand. It made her feel God existed here - a boring God, perhaps, but he existed.