Seeing her husband, she dropped her hands into the drawer of the bureau as though looking for something, and only looked round at him when he had come quite up to her.  But her face, to which she tried to give a severe and resolute expression, betrayed bewilderment and suffering.

“Dolly!” he said in a subdued and timid voice.  He bent his head towards his shoulder and tried to look pitiful and humble, but for all that he was radiant with freshness and health.  In a rapid glance she scanned his figure that beamed with health and freshness.  “Yes, he is happy and content!” she thought; “while I....  And that disgusting good nature, which every one likes him for and praises—­I hate that good nature of his,” she thought.  Her mouth stiffened, the muscles of the cheek contracted on the right side of her pale, nervous face.

“What do you want?” she said in a rapid, deep, unnatural voice.

“Dolly!” he repeated, with a quiver in his voice.  “Anna is coming today.”

“Well, what is that to me?  I can’t see her!” she cried.

“But you must, really, Dolly...”

“Go away, go away, go away!” she shrieked, not looking at him, as though this shriek were called up by physical pain.

Stepan Arkadyevitch could be calm when he thought of his wife, he could hope that she would come round, as Matvey expressed it, and could quietly go on reading his paper and drinking his coffee; but when he saw her tortured, suffering face, heard the tone of her voice, submissive to fate and full of despair, there was a catch in his breath and a lump in his throat, and his eyes began to shine with tears.

“My God! what have I done?  Dolly!  For God’s sake!....  You know....”  He could not go on; there was a sob in his throat.

She shut the bureau with a slam, and glanced at him.

“Dolly, what can I say?....  One thing:  forgive...Remember, cannot nine years of my life atone for an instant....”

She dropped her eyes and listened, expecting what he would say, as it were beseeching him in some way or other to make her believe differently.

“—­instant of passion?” he said, and would have gone on, but at that word, as at a pang of physical pain, her lips stiffened again, and again the muscles of her right cheek worked.

“Go away, go out of the room!” she shrieked still more shrilly, “and don’t talk to me of your passion and your loathsomeness.”

She tried to go out, but tottered, and clung to the back of a chair to support herself.  His face relaxed, his lips swelled, his eyes were swimming with tears.

“Dolly!” he said, sobbing now; “for mercy’s sake, think of the children; they are not to blame!  I am to blame, and punish me, make me expiate my fault.  Anything I can do, I am ready to do anything!  I am to blame, no words can express how much I am to blame!  But, Dolly, forgive me!”

She sat down.  He listened to her hard, heavy breathing, and he was unutterably sorry for her.  She tried several times to begin to speak, but could not.  He waited.