She had called him "Stiva," and he glanced at her with gratitude and moved to take her hand, but she drew back from him with aversion.

"I remember the children, and for that reason I would do anything in the world to save them; but I don't myself know the means. By taking them away from their father, or by leaving them with a vicious father- yes, a vicious father… Tell me, after what… has happened, can we live together? Is that possible? Do tell me- is it possible?" she repeated, raising her voice. "After my husband, the father of my children, enters into a love affair with his own children's governess…"

"But what's to be done? What's to be done?" 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 a heart nor a sense of honor! 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 that it was his pity for her that exasperated her. She saw in him compassion for her, but not love. "No, she hates me. She will not forgive me," he thought.

"It is awful Awful!" he said.

At that moment in the next room a child began to cry; probably it had fallen down. Darya Alexandrovna listened, and her face suddenly softened.

She seemed pulling herself together for a few seconds, as though she did not know where she was nor what she was doing, and, getting up rapidly, she moved toward the door.

"Well, she loves my child," he thought, noticing the change of her face at the child's cry, "my child: how can she hate me then?"