Stepan Arkadyevich could be calm when he thought of his wife, he could hope that everything would come round, as Matvei expressed it, and had been able to go on reading his paper and drinking his coffee; but when he saw her tortured, suffering face, heard the tone of her voice, submissive to fate and full of despair, his breath was cut short and a lump came to this throat, and his eyes began to shine with tears.

"My God! What have I done? Dolly! For God's sake!… You know…" He could not go on; there was a sob in his throat.

She shut the bureau with a slam, and glanced at him.

"Dolly, what can I say?… One thing: forgive me… Remember, cannot nine years of our life atone for an instant…"

She dropped her eyes and listened, expecting what he would say, as if beseeching him in some way or other to make her believe differently.

"…instant of passion…" he said, and would have gone on, but at that word, as at a pang of physical pain, her lips stiffened again, and again the muscles of her right cheek worked.

"Go away, go out of the room!" she shrieked still more shrilly, "and don't talk to me of your passions and your vilenesses."

She tried to go out, but tottered, and clung to the back of a chair to support herself. His face relaxed, his lips became puffy; tears welled up in his eyes.

"Dolly!" he said, sobbing now. "For mercy's sake, think of the children; they are not to blame! I am to blame- punish me then, make me expiate my fault. Anything I can do, I am ready to do! I am to blame, no words can express how much I am to blame! But, Dolly, forgive me!"

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

"You remember the children, Stiva, to play with them; but I remember, and know that they go to ruin now," she said- obviously one of the phrases she had more than once repeated to herself in the course of the last three days.