basis
of freedom on both sides."

"Divorce," Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted, in a tone of
aversion.

"Yes, I imagine that divorce--yes, divorce," Stepan Arkadyevitch
repeated, reddening. "That is from every point of view the most
rational course for married people who find themselves in the
position you are in. What can be done if married people find
that life is impossible for them together? That may always
happen."

Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed heavily and closed his eyes.

"There's only one point to be considered: is either of the
parties desirous of forming new ties? If not, it is very
simple," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, feeling more and more free
from constraint.

Alexey Alexandrovitch, scowling with emotion, muttered something
to himself, and made no answer. All that seemed so simple to
Stepan Arkadyevitch, Alexey Alexandrovitch had thought over
thousands of times. And, so far from being simple, it all seemed
to him utterly impossible. Divorce, the details of which he knew
by this time, seemed to him now out of the question, because the
sense of his own dignity and respect for religion forbade his
taking upon himself a fictitious charge of adultery, and still
more suffering his wife, pardoned and beloved by him, to be
caught in the fact and put to public shame. Divorce appeared to
him impossible also on other still more weighty grounds.

What would become of his son in case of a divorce? To leave him
with his mother was out of the question. The divorced mother
would have her own illegitimate family, in which his position as
a stepson and his education would not be good. Keep him with
him? He knew that would be an act of vengeance on his part, and
that he did not want. But apart from this, what more than all
made divorce seem impossible to Alexey Alexandrovitch was, that
by consenting to a divorce he would be completely ruining Anna.
The saying of Darya Alexandrovna at Moscow, that in deciding on a
divorce he was thinking of himself, and not considering that by
this he would be ruining her irrevocably, had sunk into his
heart. And connecting this saying with his forgiveness of her,
with his devotion to the children, he understood it now in his
own way. To consent to a divorce, to give her her freedom, meant
in his thoughts to take from himself the last tie that bound him
to life--the children whom he loved; and to take from her the
last prop that stayed her on the path of right, to thru