se. "I have
heard all! Alexey Alexandrovitch! Dear friend!" she went on,
warmly squeezing his hand in both of hers and gazing with her
fine pensive eyes into his.

Alexey Alexandrovitch, frowning, got up, and disengaging his
hand, moved her a chair.

"Won't you sit down, countess? I'm seeing no one because I'm
unwell, countess," he said, and his lips twitched.

"Dear friend!" repeated Countess Lidia Ivanovna, never taking her
eyes off his, and suddenly her eyebrows rose at the inner
corners, describing a triangle on her forehead, her ugly yellow
face became still uglier, but Alexey Alexandrovitch felt that she
was sorry for him and was preparing to cry. And he too was
softened; he snatched her plump hand and proceeded to kiss it.

"Dear friend!" she said in a voice breaking with emotion. "You
ought not to give way to grief. Your sorrow is a great one, but
you ought to find consolation."

"I am crushed, I am annihilated, I am no longer a man!" said
Alexey Alexandrovitch, letting go her hand, but still gazing into
her brimming eyes. "My position is so awful because I can find
nowhere, I cannot find within me strength to support me."

"You will find support; seek it--not in me, though I beseech you
to believe in my friendship," she said, with a sigh. "Our
support is love, that love that He has vouchsafed us. His burden
is light," she said, with the look of ecstasy Alexey
Alexandrovitch knew so well. "He will be your support and your
succor."

Although there was in these words a flavor of that sentimental
emotion at her own lofty feelings, and that new mystical fervor
which had lately gained ground in Petersburg, and which seemed to
Alexey Alexandrovitch disproportionate, still it was pleasant to
him to hear this now.

"I am weak. I am crushed. I foresaw nothing, and now I
understand nothing."

"Dear friend," repeated Lidia Ivanovna.

"It's not the loss of what I have not now, it's not that!"
pursued Alexey Alexandrovitch. "I do not grieve for that. But
I cannot help feeling humiliated before other people for the
position I am placed in. It is wrong, but I can't help it, I
can't help it."

"Not you it was performed that noble act of forgiveness, at which
I was moved to ecstasy, and everyone else too, but He, working
within your heart," said Countess Lidia Ivanovna, raising her
eyes rapturously, "and so you cannot be ashamed of your act."

Alexey Alexandrovitch knitted his brows, and crooki