"Divorce," Alexey Alexandrovitch interrupted, in a tone of

aversion.

"Yes, I imagine that divorce--yes, divorce," Stepan Arkadyevitch

repeated, reddening. "That is from every point of view the most

rational course for married people who find themselves in the

position you are in. What can be done if married people find

that life is impossible for them together? That may always

happen."

Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed heavily and closed his eyes.

"There's only one point to be considered: is either of the

parties desirous of forming new ties? If not, it is very

simple," said Stepan Arkadyevitch, feeling more and more free

from constraint.

Alexey Alexandrovitch, scowling with emotion, muttered something

to himself, and made no answer. All that seemed so simple to

Stepan Arkadyevitch, Alexey Alexandrovitch had thought over

thousands of times. And, so far from being simple, it all seemed

to him utterly impossible. Divorce, the details of which he knew

by this time, seemed to him now out of the question, because the

sense of his own dignity and respect for religion forbade his

taking upon himself a fictitious charge of adultery, and still

more suffering his wife, pardoned and beloved by him, to be

caught in the fact and put to public shame. Divorce appeared to

him impossible also on other still more weighty grounds.

What would become of his son in case of a divorce? To leave him

with his mother was out of the question. The divorced mother

would have her own illegitimate family, in which his position as

a stepson and his education would not be good. Keep him with

him? He knew that would be an act of vengeance on his part, and

that he did not want. But apart from this, what more than all

made divorce seem impossible to Alexey Alexandrovitch was, that

by consenting to a divorce he would be completely ruining Anna.

The saying of Darya Alexandrovna at Moscow, that in deciding on a

divorce he was thinking of himself, and not considering that by

this he would be ruining her irrevocably, had sunk into his

heart. And connecting this saying with his forgiveness of her,

with his devotion to the children, he understood it now in his

own way. To consent to a divorce, to give her her freedom, meant

in his thoughts to take from himself the last tie that bound him

to life--the children whom he loved; and to take from her the

last prop that stayed her on the path of right, to thrust her

down to her ruin. If she were divorced, he knew she would join

her life to Vronsky's, and their tie would be an illegitimate and

criminal one, since a wife, by the interpretation of the

ecclesiastical law, could not marry while her husband was living.

"She will join him, and in a year or two he will throw her over,

or she will form a new tie," thought Alexey Alexandrovitch. "And

I, by agreeing to an unlawful divorce, shall be to blame for her

ruin." He had thought it all over hundreds of times, and was

convinced that a divorce was not at all simple, as Stepan

Arkadyevitch had said, but was utterly impossible. He did not

believe a single word Stepan Arkadyevitch said to him; to every

word he had a thousand objections to make, but he listened to

him, feeling that his words were the expression of that mighty

brutal force which controlled his life and to which he would have

to submit.




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