all."

She mentioned them, not only remembering the names, but the
years, months, characters, illnesses of all the children, and
Dolly could not but appreciate that.

"Very well, we will go to them," she said. "It's a pity Vassya's
asleep."

After seeing the children, they sat down, alone now, in the
drawing room, to coffee. Anna took the tray, and then pushed it
away from her.

"Dolly," she said, "he has told me."

Dolly looked coldly at Anna; she was waiting now for phrases of
conventional sympathy, but Anna said nothing of the sort.

"Dolly, dear," she said, "I don't want to speak for him to you,
nor to try to comfort you; that's impossible. But, darling, I'm
simply sorry, sorry from my heart for you!"

Under the thick lashes of her shining eyes tears suddenly
glittered. She moved nearer to her sister-in-law and took her
hand in her vigorous little hand. Dolly did not shrink away, but
her face did not lose its frigid expression. She said:

"To comfort me's impossible. Everything's lost after what has
happened, everything's over!"

And directly she had said this, her face suddenly softened. Anna
lifted the wasted, thin hand of Dolly, kissed it and said:

"But, Dolly, what's to be done, what's to be done? How is it
best to act in this awful position--that's what you must think
of."

"All's over, and there's nothing more," said Dolly. "And the
worst of all is, you see, that I can't cast him off: there are
the children, I am tied. And I can't live with him! it's a
torture to me to see him."

"Dolly, darling, he has spoken to me, but I want to hear it from
you: tell me about it."

Dolly looked at her inquiringly.

Sympathy and love unfeigned were visible on Anna's face.

"Very well," she said all at once. "But I will tell you it from
the beginning. You know how I was married. With the education
mamma gave us I was more than innocent, I was stupid. I knew
nothing. I know they say men tell their wives of their former
lives, but Stiva"--she corrected herself--"Stepan Arkadyevitch
told me nothing. You'll hardly believe it, but till now I
imagined that I was the only woman he had known. So I lived
eight years. You must understand that I was so far from
suspecting infidelity, I regarded it as impossible, and then--
try to imagine it--with such ideas, to find out suddenly all the
horror, all the loathsomeness.... You must try and understand
me. To be fully convinced of one's happiness,