, this is awful, awful! But can it be true that you are
resolved on a divorce?"

"I am resolved on extreme measures. There is nothing else for me
to do."

"Nothing else to do, nothing else to do..." she replied, with
tears in her eyes. "Oh no, don't say nothing else to do!" she
said.

"What is horrible in a trouble of this kind is that one cannot,
as in any other--in loss, in death--bear one's trouble in peace,
but that one must act," said he, as though guessing her thought.
"One must get out of the humiliating position in which one is
placed; one can't live _a trois_."

"I understand, I quite understand that," said Dolly, and her head
sank. She was silent for a little, thinking of herself, of her
own grief in her family, and all at once, with an impulsive
movement, she raised her head and clasped her hands with an
imploring gesture. "But wait a little! You are a Christian.
Think of her! What will become of her, if you cast her off?"

"I have thought, Darya Alexandrovna, I have thought a great
deal," said Alexey Alexandrovitch. His face turned red in
patches, and his dim eyes looked straight before him. Darya
Alexandrovna at that moment pitied him with all her heart. "That
was what I did indeed when she herself made known to me my
humiliation; I left everything as of old. I gave her a chance to
reform, I tried to save her. And with what result? She would
not regard the slightest request--that she should observe
decorum," he said, getting heated. "One may save anyone who does
not want to be ruined; but if the whole nature is so corrupt, so
depraved, that ruin itself seems to be her salvation, what's to
be done?"

"Anything, only not divorce!" answered Darya Alexandrovna

"But what is anything?"

"No, it is awful! She will be no one's wife, she will be lost!"

"What can I do?" said Alexey Alexandrovitch, raising his
shoulders and his eyebrows. The recollection of his wife's last
act had so incensed him that he had become frigid, as at the
beginning of the conversation. "I am very grateful for your
sympathy, but I must be going," he said, getting up.

"No, wait a minute. You must not ruin her. Wait a little; I
will tell you about myself. I was married, and my husband
deceived me; in anger and jealousy, I would have thrown up
everything, I would myself.... But I came to myself again; and
who did it? Anna saved me. And here I am living on. The
children are growing up, my husband has co