After the Ball

After supper I danced the promised quadrille with her, and though I had been infinitely happy before, I grew still happier every moment. We did not speak of love. I neither asked myself nor her whether she loved me. It was quite enough to know that I loved her. And I had only one fear - that something might come to interfere with my great joy.

After the Dance was written as a protest against human cruelty and tyranny. The short story was originally intended to be published in a book to help the Jews affected by the pogrom in Chisinau in 1903. But Tolstoy didn't finish it in time and so the story wasn't published until 1911, the year after his death.