She sat down. He listened to her hard, heavy breathing, and he was unutterably sorry for her. She tried several times to begin to speak, but could not. He waited.

“Tell me, after what… has happened, can we live together?” Dolly answered finally, glancing at the stiff, silent form of Dolichka, missing the comfort of her animated presence. “Is that possible? Tell me, eh, is it possible?” she repeated, raising her voice, “after my husband, the father of my children, enters into a love affair with a common household mécanicienne?”

“But what could I do? What could I do?” he kept saying in a pitiful voice, not knowing what he was saying, as his head sank lower and lower.

“You are loathsome to me, repulsive!” she shrieked, getting more and more heated. “Your tears mean nothing! You have never loved me; you have neither heart nor honorable feeling! You are hateful to me, disgusting, a stranger-yes, a complete stranger!” With pain and wrath she uttered the word so terrible to herself-stranger.

He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and amazed him. He did not understand how his pity for her exasperated her. She saw in him sympathy for her, but not love. No, she hates me. She will not forgive me, he thought.

“Dolly! Wait! One word more,” he said.

“Dolichka!” Dolly cried, turning her back to him and agitatedly flicking the red switch beneath her Class III’s chin; the angular machine-woman’s circuits sprang to life, and together the two of them fled the room.

“If you come near me, I will call in the neighbors, the children! Every Class II in the house will know you are a scoundrel! I am going away at once, and you may live here with your jumpsuited mistress!”

And she went out, slamming the door.