"What do you want?" she said in a rapid, deep, unnatural voice.
"Dolly!" he repeated, with a quiver in his voice. "Anna is
coming today."
"Well, what is that to me? I can't see her!" she cried.
"But you must, really, Dolly..."
"Go away, go away, go away!" she shrieked, not looking at him, as
though this shriek were called up by physical pain.
Stepan Arkadyevitch could be calm when he thought of his wife, he
could hope that she would _come round_, as Matvey expressed it, and
could quietly 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, there was a
catch in his breath and a lump in his 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...Remember,
cannot nine years of my life atone for an instant...."
She dropped her eyes and listened, expecting what he would say,
as it were 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 passion and your loathsomeness."
She tried to go out, but tottered, and clung to the back of a
chair to support herself. His face relaxed, his lips swelled,
his eyes were swimming with tears.
"Dolly!" he said, sobbing now; "for mercy's sake, think of the
children; they are not to blame! I am to blame, and punish me,
make me expiate my fault. Anything I can do, I am ready to do
anything! 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 tried several times to begin
to speak, but could not. He waited.
"You remember the children, Stiva, to play with them; but I
remember them, and know that this means their ruin," she
said--obviously one of the phrases she had more than once
repeated to herself in the course of the last few days.