“You remember the children, Stiva, to play with them; but I remember them, and know that this means their ruin,” she said—­obviously one of the phrases she had more than once repeated to herself in the course of the last few days.

She had called him “Stiva,” and he glanced at her with gratitude, and moved to take her hand, but she drew back from him with aversion.

“I think of the children, and for that reason I would do anything in the world to save them, but I don’t myself know how to save them.  By taking them away from their father, or by leaving them with a vicious father—­yes, a vicious father....  Tell me, after what...has happened, can we live together?  Is that possible?  Tell me, eh, is it possible?” she repeated, raising her voice, “after my husband, the father of my children, enters into a love affair with his own children’s governess?”

“But what could I do? what could I do?” he kept saying in a pitiful voice, not knowing what he was saying, as his head sank lower and lower.

“You are loathsome to me, repulsive!” she shrieked, getting more and more heated.  “Your tears mean nothing!  You have never loved me; you have neither heart nor honorable feeling!  You are hateful to me, disgusting, a stranger—­yes, a complete stranger!” With pain and wrath she uttered the word so terrible to herself—­stranger.

He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and amazed him.  He did not understand how his pity for her exasperated her.  She saw in him sympathy for her, but not love.  “No, she hates me.  She will not forgive me,” he thought.

“It is awful! awful!” he said.

At that moment in the next room a child began to cry; probably it had fallen down.  Darya Alexandrovna listened, and her face suddenly softened.

She seemed to be pulling herself together for a few seconds, as though she did not know where she was, and what she was doing, and getting up rapidly, she moved towards the door.

“Well, she loves my child,” he thought, noticing the change of her face at the child’s cry, “my child:  how can she hate me?”

“Dolly, one word more,” he said, following her.

“If you come near me, I will call in the servants, the children!  They may all know you are a scoundrel!  I am going away at once, and you may live here with your mistress!”

And she went out, slamming the door.

Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed, wiped his face, and with a subdued tread walked out of the room.  “Matvey says she will come round; but how?  I don’t see the least chance of it.  Ah, oh, how horrible it is!  And how vulgarly she shouted,” he said to himself, remembering her shriek and the words—­“scoundrel” and “mistress.”  “And very likely the maids were listening!  Horribly vulgar! horrible!” Stepan Arkadyevitch stood a few seconds alone, wiped his face, squared his chest, and walked out of the room.