“Dieu preserve,” answered her brother-in-law, with his usual somewhat exaggerated politeness, and brought forward a chair for her.

“Ca ne vous derange pas?” she asked, taking out a cigarette.  “I’m not going to say anything unpleasant, Michael.  I only wanted to say something about Lisochka.”

Michael Ivanovich sighed—­the word pained him; but mastering himself at once, he answered with a tired smile.  “Our conversation can only be on one subject, and that is the subject you wish to discuss.”  He spoke without looking at her, and avoided even naming the subject.  But his plump, pretty little sister-in-law was unabashed.  She continued to regard him with the same gentle, imploring look in her blue eyes, sighing even more deeply.

“Michael, mon bon ami, have pity on her.  She is only human.”

“I never doubted that,” said Michael Ivanovich with a bitter smile.

“She is your daughter.”

“She was—­but my dear Aline, why talk about this?”

“Michael, dear, won’t you see her?  I only wanted to say, that the one who is to blame—­”

Prince Michael Ivanovich flushed; his face became cruel.

“For heaven’s sake, let us stop.  I have suffered enough.  I have now but one desire, and that is to put her in such a position that she will be independent of others, and that she shall have no further need of communicating with me.  Then she can live her own life, and my family and I need know nothing more about her.  That is all I can do.”

“Michael, you say nothing but ‘I’!  She, too, is ‘I.’”

“No doubt; but, dear Aline, please let us drop the matter.  I feel it too deeply.”

Alexandra Dmitrievna remained silent for a few moments, shaking her head.  “And Masha, your wife, thinks as you do?”

“Yes, quite.”

Alexandra Dmitrievna made an inarticulate sound.

“Brisons la dessus et bonne nuit,” said he.  But she did not go.  She stood silent a moment.  Then,—­“Peter tells me you intend to leave the money with the woman where she lives.  Have you the address?”

“I have.”

“Don’t leave it with the woman, Michael!  Go yourself.  Just see how she lives.  If you don’t want to see her, you need not.  He isn’t there; there is no one there.”

Michael Ivanovich shuddered violently.

“Why do you torture me so?  It’s a sin against hospitality!”

Alexandra Dmitrievna rose, and almost in tears, being touched by her own pleading, said, “She is so miserable, but she is such a dear.”

He got up, and stood waiting for her to finish.  She held out her hand.

“Michael, you do wrong,” said she, and left him.

For a long while after she had gone Michael Ivanovich walked to and fro on the square of carpet.  He frowned and shivered, and exclaimed, “Oh, oh!” And then the sound of his own voice frightened him, and he was silent.