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service, and now of course any fresh, vulgar creature has more charm
for him. No doubt they talked of me together, or, worse still, they were
silent. Do you understand?”
Again her eyes glowed with hatred.
“And after that he will tell me.... What! can I believe him? Never!
No, everything is over, everything that once made my comfort, the
reward of my work, and my sufferings.... Would you believe it, I was
teaching Grisha just now: once this was a joy to me, now it is a torture.
What have I to strive and toil for? Why are the children here? What’s
so awful is that all at once my heart’s turned, and instead of love and
tenderness, I have nothing but hatred for him; yes, hatred. I could kill
him.”
“Darling Dolly, I understand, but don’t torture yourself. You are so
distressed, so overwrought, that you look at many things mistakenly.”
Dolly grew calmer, and for two minutes both were silent.
“What’s to be done? Think for me, Anna, help me. I have thought
over everything, and I see nothing.”
Anna could think of nothing, but her heart responded instantly to
each word, to each change of expression of her sister-in-law.
“One thing I would say,” began Anna. “I am his sister, I know his
character, that faculty of forgetting everything, everything” (she waved
her hand before her forehead), “that faculty for being completely car-
ried away, but for completely repenting too. He cannot believe it, he
cannot comprehend now how he can have acted as he did.”
“No; he understands, he understood!” Dolly broke in. “But I...you
are forgetting me...does it make it easier for me?”
“Wait a minute. When he told me, I will own I did not realize all
the awfulness of your position. I saw nothing but him, and that the
family was broken up. I felt sorry for him, but after talking to you, I see
it, as a woman, quite differently. I see your agony, and I can’t tell you
how sorry I am for you! But, Dolly, darling, I fully realize your suffer-
ings, only there is one thing I don’t know; I don’t know...I don’t know
how much love there is still in your heart for him. That you know—
whether there is enough for you to be able to forgive him. If there is,
forgive him!”
“No,” Dolly was beginning, but Anna cut her short, kissing her
hand once more.
“I know more of the world than you do,” she said. “I know how met
like Stiva look at it. You speak of his talking of you with her. That never
happened. Such men are unfaithful, but their home and wife are
sacred to them. Somehow or other these women are still looked on with
contempt by them, and do not touch on their feeling for their family.
They draw a sort of line that can’t be crossed between them and their
families. I don’t understand it, but it is so.”
“Yes, but he has kissed her...”
“Dolly, hush, darling. I saw Stiva when he was in love with you. I
remember the time when he came to me and cried, talking of you, and
all the poetry and loftiness of his feeling for you, and I know that the
longer he has lived with you the loftier you have been in his eyes. You
know we have sometimes laughed at him for putting in at every word:
‘Dolly’s a marvelous woman.’ You have always been a divinity for him,
and you are that still, and this has not been an infidelity of the heart...”
“But if it is repeated?”
“It cannot be, as I understand it...”
“Yes, but could you forgive it?”
“I don’t know, I can’t judge.... Yes, I can,” said Anna, thinking a
moment; and grasping the position in her thought and weighing it in
her inner balance, she added: “Yes, I can, I can, I can. Yes, I could