ast,
his tenderness, his love for his sick wife, and for the other
man's child with what was now the case, that is with the fact
that, as it were, in return for all this he now found himself
alone, put to shame, a laughing-stock, needed by no one, and
despised by everyone.

For the first two days after his wife's departure Alexey
Alexandrovitch received applicants for assistance and his chief
secretary, drove to the committee, and went down to dinner in the
dining room as usual. Without giving himself a reason for what
he was doing, he strained every nerve of his being for those two
days, simply to preserve an appearance of composure, and even of
indifference. Answering inquiries about the disposition of Anna
Arkadyevna's rooms and belongings, he had exercised immense
self-control to appear like a man in whose eyes what had occurred
was not unforeseen nor out of the ordinary course of events, and
he attained his aim: no one could have detected in him signs of
despair. But on the second day after her departure, when Korney
gave him a bill from a fashionable draper's shop, which Anna had
forgotten to pay, and announced that the clerk from the shop was
waiting, Alexey Alexandrovitch told him to show the clerk up.

"Excuse me, your excellency, for venturing to trouble you. But
if you direct us to apply to her excellency, would you graciously
oblige us with her address?"

Alexey Alexandrovitch pondered, as it seemed to the clerk, and
all at once, turning round, he sat down at the table. Letting
his head sink into his hands, he sat for a long while in that
position, several times attempted to speak and stopped short.
Korney, perceiving his master's emotion, asked the clerk to call
another time. Left alone, Alexey Alexandrovitch recognized that
he had not the strength to keep up the line of firmness and
composure any longer. He gave orders for the carriage that was
awaiting him to be taken back, and for no one to be admitted, and
he did not go down to dinner.

He felt that he could not endure the weight of universal contempt
and exasperation, which he had distinctly seen in the face of the
clerk and of Korney, and of everyone, without exception, whom he
had met during those two days. He felt that he could not turn
aside from himself the hatred of men, because that hatred did not
come from his being bad (in that case he could have tried to be
better), but from his being shamefully and repulsively unhappy.
He kne