and all at
once..." continued Dolly, holding back her sobs, "to get a
letter...his letter to his mistress, my governess. No, it's too
awful!" She hastily pulled out her handkerchief and hid her face
in it. "I can understand being carried away by feeling," she
went on after a brief silence, "but deliberately, slyly deceiving
me...and with whom?... To go on being my husband together with
her...it's awful! You can't understand..."

"Oh, yes, I understand! I understand! Dolly, dearest, I do
understand," said Anna, pressing her hand.

"And do you imagine he realizes all the awfulness of my
position?" Dolly resumed. "Not the slightest! He's happy and
contented."

"Oh, no!" Anna interposed quickly. "He's to be pitied, he's
weighed down by remorse..."

"Is he capable of remorse?" Dolly interrupted, gazing intently
into her sister-in-law's face.

"Yes. I know him. I could not look at him without feeling sorry
for him. We both know him. He's good-hearted, but he's proud,
and now he's so humiliated. What touched me most..." (and here
Anna guessed what would touch Dolly most) "he's tortured by two
things: that he's ashamed for the children's sake, and that,
loving you--yes, yes, loving you beyond everything on earth,"
she hurriedly interrupted Dolly, who would have answered--"he
has hurt you, pierced you to the heart. 'No, no, she cannot
forgive me,' he keeps saying."

Dolly looked dreamily away beyond her sister-in-law as she
listened to her words.

"Yes, I can see that his position is awful; it's worse for the
guilty than the innocent," she said, "if he feels that all the
misery comes from his fault. But how am I to forgive him, how am
I to be his wife again after her? For me to live with him now
would be torture, just because I love my past love for him..."

And sobs cut short her words. But as though of set design, each
time she was softened she began to speak again of what
exasperated her.

"She's young, you see, she's pretty," she went on. "Do you know,
Anna, my youth and my beauty are gone, taken by whom? By him and
his children. I have worked for him, and all I had has gone in
his service, and now of course any fresh, vulgar creature has
more charm for him. No doubt they talked of me together, or,
worse still, they were silent. Do you understand?"

Again her eyes glowed with hatred.

"And after that he will tell me.... What! can I believe him?
Never! No, everything is over, everything