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Chapter 21.
From the moment when Alexey Alexandrovitch understood from
his interviews with Betsy and with Stepan Arkadyevitch that all that
was expected of him was to leave his wife in peace, without burdening
her with his presence, and that his wife herself desired this, he felt so
distraught that he could come to no decision of himself; he did not
know himself what he wanted now, and putting himself in the hands of
those who were so pleased to interest themselves in his affairs, he met
everything with unqualified assent. It was only when Anna had left
his house, and the English governess sent to ask him whether she
should dine with him or separately, that for the first time he clearly
comprehended his position, and was appalled by it. Most difficult of
all in this position was the fact that he could not in any way connect
and reconcile his past with what was now. It was not the past when he
had lived happily with his wife that troubled him. The transition from
that past to a knowledge of his wife’s unfaithfulness he had lived
through miserably already; that state was painful, but he could under-
stand it. If his wife had then, on declaring to him her unfaithfulness,
left him, he would have been wounded, unhappy, but he would not
have been in the hopeless position—incomprehensible to himself—in
which he felt himself now. He could not now reconcile his immediate
past, his tenderness, his love for his sick wife, and for the other man’s
child with what was now the case, that is with the fact that, as it were,
in return for all this he now found himself alone, put to shame, a
laughing-stock, needed by no one, and despised by everyone.
For the first two days after his wife’s departure Alexey
Alexandrovitch received applicants for assistance and his chief secre-
tary, drove to the committee, and went down to dinner in the dining
room as usual. Without giving himself a reason for what he was doing,
he strained every nerve of his being for those two days, simply to
preserve an appearance of composure, and even of indifference. An-
swering inquiries about the disposition of Anna Arkadyevna’s rooms
and belongings, he had exercised immense self-control to appear like a
man in whose eyes what had occurred was not unforeseen nor out of
the ordinary course of events, and he attained his aim: no one could
have detected in him signs of despair. But on the second day after her
departure, when Korney gave him a bill from a fashionable draper’s
shop, which Anna had forgotten to pay, and announced that the clerk
from the shop was waiting, Alexey Alexandrovitch told him to show
the clerk up.
“Excuse me, your excellency, for venturing to trouble you. But if
you direct us to apply to her excellency, would you graciously oblige us
with her address?”
Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, as it seemed to the clerk, and all
at once, turning round, he sat down at the table. Letting his head sink
into his hands, he sat for a long while in that position, several times
attempted to speak and stopped short. Korney, perceiving his master’s
emotion, asked the clerk to call another time. Left alone, Alexey
Alexandrovitch recognized that he had not the strength to keep up the
line of firmness and composure any longer. He gave orders for the
carriage that was awaiting him to be taken back, and for no one to be