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pened, everything’s over!”
And directly she had said this, her face suddenly softened. Anna
lifted the wasted, thin hand of Dolly, kissed it and said:
“But, Dolly, what’s to be done, what’s to be done? How is it best to
act in this awful position—that’s what you must think of.”
“All’s over, and there’s nothing more,” said Dolly. “And the worst of
all is, you see, that I can’t cast him off: there are the children, I am tied.
And I can’t live with him! it’s a torture to me to see him.”
“Dolly, darling, he has spoken to me, but I want to hear it from you:
tell me about it.”
Dolly looked at her inquiringly.
Sympathy and love unfeigned were visible on Anna’s face.
“Very well,” she said all at once. “But I will tell you it from the
beginning. You know how I was married. With the education mamma
gave us I was more than innocent, I was stupid. I knew nothing. I
know they say men tell their wives of their former lives, but Stiva”—
she corrected herself—”Stepan Arkadyevitch told me nothing. You’ll
hardly believe it, but till now I imagined that I was the only woman he
had known. So I lived eight years. You must understand that I was so
far from suspecting infidelity, I regarded it as impossible, and then—
try to imagine it—with such ideas, to find out suddenly all the horror,
all the loathsomeness.... You must try and understand me. To be fully
convinced of one’s happiness, and all at once...” continued Dolly, hold-
ing back her sobs, “to get a letter...his letter to his mistress, my govern-
ess. No, it’s too awful!” She hastily pulled out her handkerchief and
hid her face in it. “I can understand being carried away by feeling,” she
went on after a brief silence, “but deliberately, slyly deceiving me...and
with whom?... To go on being my husband together with her...it’s
awful! You can’t understand...”
“Oh, yes, I understand! I understand! Dolly, dearest, I do under-
stand,” said Anna, pressing her hand.
“And do you imagine he realizes all the awfulness of my position?”
Dolly resumed. “Not the slightest! He’s happy and contented.”
“Oh, no!” Anna interposed quickly. “He’s to be pitied, he’s weighed
down by remorse...”
“Is he capable of remorse?” Dolly interrupted, gazing intently into
her sister-in-law’s face.
“Yes. I know him. I could not look at him without feeling sorry for
him. We both know him. He’s good-hearted, but he’s proud, and now
he’s so humiliated. What touched me most...” (and here Anna guessed
what would touch Dolly most) “he’s tortured by two things: that he’s
ashamed for the children’s sake, and that, loving you—yes, yes, loving
you beyond everything on earth,” she hurriedly interrupted Dolly, who
would have answered— “he has hurt you, pierced you to the heart.
‘No, no, she cannot forgive me,’ he keeps saying.”
Dolly looked dreamily away beyond her sister-in-law as she lis-
tened to her words.
“Yes, I can see that his position is awful; it’s worse for the guilty
than the innocent,” she said, “if he feels that all the misery comes from
his fault. But how am I to forgive him, how am I to be his wife again
after her? For me to live with him now would be torture, just because
I love my past love for him...”
And sobs cut short her words. But as though of set design, each
time she was softened she began to speak again of what exasperated
her.
“She’s young, you see, she’s pretty,” she went on. “Do you know,
Anna, my youth and my beauty are gone, taken by whom? By him and
his children. I have worked for him, and all I had has gone in his