He caught his breath....  He leaned against the wall.

“Theodore, do not repulse me!” she said in French, and her voice cut to his heart like a knife.

He looked at her senselessly, and yet he noticed involuntarily at once that she had grown both whiter and fatter.

“Theodore!” she went on, from time to time lifting her eyes and discreetly wringing her marvellously-beautiful fingers with their rosy, polished nails.  “Theodore, I have wronged you, deeply wronged you; I will say more, I have sinned:  but hear me; I am tortured by remorse, I have grown hateful to myself, I could endure my position no longer; how many times have I thought of turning to you, but I feared your anger; I resolved to break every tie with the past . . . .  Puis j’ai ete si malade . . . .  I have been so ill,” she added, and passed her hand over her brow and cheek.  I took advantage of the widely-spread rumour of my death, I gave up everything; without resting day or night I hastened hither; I hesitated long to appear before you, my judge . . . paraitre devant vous, mon juge; but I resolved at last, remembering your constant goodness, to come to you; I found your address at Moscow.  Believe me,” she went on, slowly getting up from the floor and sitting on the very! edge of an arm-chair, “I have often thought of death, and I should have found courage enough to take my life . . . ah! life is a burden unbearable for me now! . . . but the thought of my daughter, my little Ada, stopped me.  She is here, she is asleep in the next room, the poor child!  She is tired—­you shall see her; she at least has done you no wrong, and I am so unhappy, so unhappy!” cried Madame Lavretsky, and she melted into tears.

Lavretsky came to himself at last; he moved away from the wall and turned towards the door.

“You are going?” cried his wife in a voice of despair.  “Oh, this is cruel!  Without uttering one word to me, not even a reproach.  This contempt will kill me, it is terrible!”

Lavretsky stood still.

“What do you want to hear from me?” he articulated in an expressionless voice.

“Nothing, nothing,” she rejoined quickly, “I know I have no right to expect anything; I am not mad, believe me; I do not hope, I do not dare to hope for your forgiveness; I only venture to entreat you to command me what I am to do, where I am to live.  Like a slave I will fulfil your commands whatever they may be.”

“I have no commands to give you,” replied Lavretsky in the same colourless voice; “you know, all is over between us . . . and now more than ever; you can live where you like; and if your allowance is too little—­”

“Ah, don’t say such dreadful things,” Varvara Pavlovna interrupted him, “spare me, if only . . . if only for the sake of this angel.”  And as she uttered these words, Varvara Pavlovna ran impulsively into the next room, and returned at once with a small and very elegantly dressed little girl in her arms.