"There is no deceit she would stick at. She was near her

confinement. Perhaps it is the confinement. But what can be

their aim? To legitimize the child, to compromise me, and

prevent a divorce," he thought. "But something was said in it: I

am dying...." He read the telegram again, and suddenly the plain

meaning of what was said in it struck him.

"And if it is true?" he said to himself. "If it is true that in

the moment of agony and nearness to death she is genuinely

penitent, and I, taking it for a trick, refuse to go? That would

not only be cruel, and everyone would blame me, but it would be

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stupid on my part."

"Piotr, call a coach; I am going to Petersburg," he said to his

servant.

Alexey Alexandrovitch decided that he would go to Petersburg and

see his wife. If her illness was a trick, he would say nothing

and go away again. If she was really in danger, and wished to

see him before her death, he would forgive her if he found her

alive, and pay her the last duties if he came too late.

All the way he thought no more of what he ought to do.

With a sense of weariness and uncleanness from the night spent in

the train, in the early fog of Petersburg Alexey Alexandrovitch

drove through the deserted Nevsky and stared straight before him,

not thinking of what was awaiting him. He could not think about

it, because in picturing what would happen, he could not drive

away the reflection that her death would at once remove all the

difficulty of his position. Bakers, closed shops, night-cabmen,

porters sweeping the pavements flashed past his eyes, and he

watched it all, trying to smother the thought of what was

awaiting him, and what he dared not hope for, and yet was hoping

for. He drove up to the steps. A sledge and a carriage with the

coachman asleep stood at the entrance. As he went into the

entry, Alexey Alexandrovitch, as it were, got out his resolution

from the remotest corner of his brain, and mastered it

thoroughly. Its meaning ran: "If it's a trick, then calm

contempt and departure. If truth, do what is proper."

The porter opened the door before Alexey Alexandrovitch rang.

The porter, Kapitonitch, looked queer in an old coat, without a

tie, and in slippers.

"How is your mistress?"

"A successful confinement yesterday."

Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped short and turned white. He felt

distinctly now how intensely he had longed for her death.




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