"Then there is all the more reason for you to legalize your

position, if possible," said Dolly.

"Yes, if possible," said Anna, speaking all at once in an utterly

different tone, subdued and mournful.

"Surely you don't mean a divorce is impossible? I was told your

husband had consented to it."

"Dolly, I don't want to talk about that."

"Oh, we won't then," Darya Alexandrovna hastened to say, noticing

the expression of suffering on Anna's face. "All I see is that

you take too gloomy a view of things."

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"I? Not at all! I'm always bright and happy. You see, _je fais

des passions._ Veslovsky..."

"Yes, to tell the truth, I don't like Veslovsky's tone," said

Darya Alexandrovna, anxious to change the subject.

"Oh, that's nonsense! It amuses Alexey, and that's all; but he's

a boy, and quite under my control. You know, I turn him as I

please. It's just as it might be with your Grisha.... Dolly!"--

she suddenly changed the subject--"you say I take too gloomy a

view of things. You can't understand. It's too awful! I try not

to take any view of it at all."

"But I think you ought to. You ought to do all you can."

"But what can I do? Nothing. You tell me to marry Alexey, and

say I don't think about it. I don't think about it!" she

repeated, and a flush rose into her face. She got up,

straightening her chest, and sighed heavily. With her light step

she began pacing up and down the room, stopping now and then. "I

don't think of it? Not a day, not an hour passes that I don't

think of it, and blame myself for thinking of it...because

thinking of that may drive me mad. Drive me mad!" she repeated.

"When I think of it, I can't sleep without morphine. But never

mind. Let us talk quietly. They tell me, divorce. In the first

place, he won't give me a divorce. He's under the influence of

Countess Lidia Ivanovna now."

Darya Alexandrovna, sitting erect on a chair, turned her head,

following Anna with a face of sympathetic suffering.

"You ought to make the attempt," she said softly.

"Suppose I make the attempt. What does it mean?" she said,

evidently giving utterance to a thought, a thousand times thought

over and learned by heart. "It means that I, hating him, but

still recognizing that I have wronged him--and I consider him

magnanimous--that I humiliate myself to write to him.... Well,

suppose I make the effort; I do it. Either I receive a

humiliating refusal or consent.... Well, I have received his

consent, say..." Anna was at that moment at the furthest end

of the room, and she stopped there, doing something to the

curtain at the window. "I receive his consent, but my...my

son? They won't give him up to me. He will grow up despising

me, with his father, whom I've abandoned. Do you see, I love...

equally, I think, but both more than myself--two creatures,

Seryozha and Alexey."




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