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what I’ve come to Petersburg for.”
“The whole town’s talking of it,” she said. “It’s an impossible posi-
tion. She pines and pines away. He doesn’t understand that she’s one
of those women who can’t trifle with their feelings. One of two things!
either let him take her away, act with energy, or give her a divorce. This
is stifling her.”
“Yes, yes...just so...” Oblonsky said, sighing. “That’s what I’ve
come for. At least not solely for that...I’ve been made a Kammerherr; of
course, one has to say thank you. But the chief thing was having to
settle this.”
“Well, God help you!” said Betsy.
After accompanying Betsy to the outside hall, once more kissing
her hand above the glove, at the point where the pulse beats, and
murmuring to her such unseemly nonsense that she did not know
whether to laugh or be angry, Stepan Arkadyevitch went to his sister.
He found her in tears.
Although he happened to be bubbling over with good spirits, Stepan
Arkadyevitch immediately and quite naturally fell into the sympa-
thetic, poetically emotional tone which harmonized with her mood. He
asked her how she was, and how she had spent the morning.
“Very, very miserably. Today and this morning and all past days
and days to come,” she said.
“I think you’re giving way to pessimism. You must rouse yourself,
you must look life in the face. I know it’s hard, but...”
“I have heard it said that women love men even for their vices,”
Anna began suddenly, “but I hate him for his virtues. I can’t live with
him. Do you understand? the sight of him has a physical effect on me,
it makes me beside myself. I can’t, I can’t live with him. What am I to
do? I have been unhappy, and used to think one couldn’t be more
unhappy, but the awful state of things I am going through now, I could
never have conceived. Would you believe it, that knowing he’s a good
man, a splendid man, that I’m not worth his little finger, still I hate him.
I hate him for his generosity. And there’s nothing left for me but...”
She would have said death, but Stepan Arkadyevitch would not
let her finish.
“You are ill and overwrought,” he said; “believe me, you’re exagger-
ating dreadfully. There’s nothing so terrible in it.”
And Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. No one else in Stepan
Arkadyevitch’s place, having to do with such despair, would have ven-
tured to smile (the smile would have seemed brutal); but in his smile
there was so much of sweetness and almost feminine tenderness that
his smile did not wound, but softened and soothed. His gentle, sooth-
ing words and smiles were as soothing and softening as almond oil.
And Anna soon felt this.
“No, Stiva,” she said, “I’m lost, lost! worse than lost! I can’t say yet
that all is over; on the contrary, I feel that it’s not over. I’m an over-
strained string that must snap. But it’s not ended yet...and it will have
a fearful end.”
“No matter, we must let the string be loosened, little by little. There’s
no position from which there is no way of escape.”
“I have thought, and thought. Only one...”
Again he knew from her terrified eyes that this one way of escape
in her thought was death, and he would not let her say it.
“Not at all,” he said. “Listen to me. You can’t see your own position
as I can. Let me tell you candidly my opinion.” Again he smiled
discreetly his almond-oil smile. “I’ll begin from the beginning. You
married a man twenty years older than yourself. You married him
without love and not knowing what love was. It was a mistake, let’s