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“That’s what I wanted to say to her,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch,
turning away.
“Yes, yes...” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, not able to answer for the
tears that were choking him.
“Yes, yes, I understand you,” he brought out at last.
“I want to know what she would like,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“I am afraid she does not understand her own position. She is not
a judge,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch, recovering himself. “She is crushed,
simply crushed by your generosity. If she were to read this letter, she
would be incapable of saying anything, she would only hang her head
lower than ever.”
“Yes, but what’s to be done in that case? how explain, how find out
her wishes?”
“If you will allow me to give my opinion, I think that it lies with you
to point out directly the steps you consider necessary to end the posi-
tion.”
“So you consider it must be ended?” Alexey Alexandrovitch inter-
rupted him. “But how?” he added, with a gesture of his hands before
his eyes not usual with him. “I see no possible way out of it.”
“There is some way of getting out of every position,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, standing up and becoming more cheerful. “There was a
time when you thought of breaking off.... If you are convinced now
that you cannot make each other happy...”
“Happiness may be variously understood. But suppose that I
agree to everything, that I want nothing: what way is there of getting
out of our position?”
“If you care to know my opinion,” said Stepan Arkadyevitch with
the same smile of softening, almond-oil tenderness with which he had
been talking to Anna. His kindly smile was so winning that Alexey
Alexandrovitch, feeling his own weakness and unconsciously swayed
by it, was ready to believe what Stepan Arkadyevitch was saying.
“She will never speak out about it. But one thing is possible, one
thing she might desire,” he went on: “that is the cessation of your
relations and all memories associated with them. To my thinking, in
your position what’s essential is the formation of a new attitude to one
another. And that can only rest on a basis of freedom on both sides.”
“Divorce,” Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted, in a tone of aver-
sion.
“Yes, I imagine that divorce—yes, divorce,” Stepan Arkadyevitch
repeated, reddening. “That is from every point of view the most ratio-
nal course for married people who find themselves in the position you
are in. What can be done if married people find that life is impossible
for them together? That may always happen.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed heavily and closed his eyes.
“There’s only one point to be considered: is either of the parties
desirous of forming new ties? If not, it is very simple,” said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, feeling more and more free from constraint.
Alexey Alexandrovitch, scowling with emotion, muttered some-
thing to himself, and made no answer. All that seemed so simple to
Stepan Arkadyevitch, Alexey Alexandrovitch had thought over thou-
sands of times. And, so far from being simple, it all seemed to him
utterly impossible. Divorce, the details of which he knew by this time,
seemed to him now out of the question, because the sense of his own
dignity and respect for religion forbade his taking upon himself a ficti-
tious charge of adultery, and still more suffering his wife, pardoned and
beloved by him, to be caught in the fact and put to public shame.
Divorce appeared to him impossible also on other still more weighty
grounds.