or; society
believes in us; we ought to point out the terrible harm which
threatens it and the next generation from the existence of ladies
like Nadyezhda Ivanovna."

"Fyodorovna," Samoylenko corrected. "But what ought society to do?"

"Society? That's its affair. To my thinking the surest and most
direct method is--compulsion. _Manu militari_ she ought to be
returned to her husband; and if her husband won't take her in, then
she ought to be sent to penal servitude or some house of correction."

"Ouf!" sighed Samoylenko. He paused and asked quietly: "You said
the other day that people like Laevsky ought to be destroyed. . . .
Tell me, if you . . . if the State or society commissioned you
to destroy him, could you . . . bring yourself to it?"

"My hand would not tremble."

IX

When they got home, Laevsky and Nadyezhda Fyodorovna went into their
dark, stuffy, dull rooms. Both were silent. Laevsky lighted a candle,
while Nadyezhda Fyodorovna sat down, and without taking off her
cloak and hat, lifted her melancholy, guilty eyes to him.

He knew that she expected an explanation from him, but an explanation
would be wearisome, useless and exhausting, and his heart was heavy
because he had lost control over himself and been rude to her. He
chanced to feel in his pocket the letter which he had been intending
every day to read to her, and thought if he were to show her that
letter now, it would turn her thoughts in another direction.

"It is time to define our relations," he thought. "I will give it
her; what is to be will be."

He took out the letter and gave it her.

"Read it. It concerns you."

Saying this, he went into his own room and lay down on the sofa in
the dark without a pillow. Nadyezhda Fyodorovna read the letter,
and it seemed to her as though the ceiling were falling and the
walls were closing in on her. It seemed suddenly dark and shut in
and terrible. She crossed herself quickly three times and said:

"Give him peace, O Lord . . . give him peace. . . ."

And she began crying.

"Vanya," she called. "Ivan Andreitch!"

There was no answer. Thinking that Laevsky had come in and was
standing behind her chair, she sobbed like a child, and said:

"Why did you not tell me before that he was dead? I wouldn't have
gone to the picnic; I shouldn't have laughed so horribly. . . . The
men said horrid things to me. What a sin, what a sin! Save me,
Vanya, save me. . . . I have been mad. . . . I am lost. . .