"Well, I'm listening to what's to come," she said, calmly and
ironically; "and indeed I listen with interest, for I should
like to understand what's the matter."
She spoke, and marveled at the confident, calm, and natural tone
in which she was speaking, and the choice of the words she used.
"To enter into all the details of your feelings I have no right,
and besides, I regard that as useless and even harmful," began
Alexey Alexandrovitch. "Ferreting in one's soul, one often
ferrets out something that might have lain there unnoticed. Your
feelings are an affair of your own conscience; but I am in duty
bound to you, to myself, and to God, to point out to you your
duties. Our life has been joined, not by man, but by God. That
union can only be severed by a crime, and a crime of that nature
brings its own chastisement."
"I don't understand a word. And, oh dear! how sleepy I am,
unluckily," she said, rapidly passing her hand through her hair,
feeling for the remaining hairpins.
"Anna, for God's sake don't speak like that!" he said gently.
"Perhaps I am mistaken, but believe me, what I say, I say as much
for myself as for you. I am your husband, and I love you."
For an instant her face fell, and the mocking gleam in her eyes
died away; but the word love threw her into revolt again. She
thought: "Love? Can he love? If he hadn't heard there was such
a thing as love, he would never have used the word. He doesn't
even know what love is."
"Alexey Alexandrovitch, really I don't understand," she said.
"Define what it is you find..."
"Pardon, let me say all I have to say. I love you. But I am not
speaking of myself; the most important persons in this matter are
our son and yourself. It may very well be, I repeat, that my
words seem to you utterly unnecessary and out of place; it may be
that they are called forth by my mistaken impression. In that
case, I beg you to forgive me. But if you are conscious
yourself of even the smallest foundation for them, then I beg you
to think a little, and if your heart prompts you, to speak out to
me..."
Alexey Alexandrovitch was unconsciously saying something utterly
unlike what he had prepared.
"I have nothing to say. And besides," she said hurriedly, with
difficulty repressing a smile, "it's really time to be in bed."