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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy: if on purpose, I turned the conversation upon his skill as a
violinist, and he answered that, contrary to what I had heard, he
now played the violin more than formerly. He remembered that I
used to play. I answered that I had abandoned music, but that my
wife played very well.
"Singular thing! Why, in the important events of our life, in
those in which a man's fate is decided,--as mine was decided in
that moment,--why in these events is there neither a past nor a
future? My relations with Troukhatchevsky the first day, at the
first hour, were such as they might still have been after all
that has happened. I was conscious that some frightful
 The Kreutzer Sonata |