On a round table covered with a tablecloth stood a Chinese tea service and a silver spirit-lamp tea-kettle. Alexei Alexandrovich absentmindedly glanced around at the numberless familiar portraits that adorned the boudoir, and, sitting down at the desk, opened the Gospel that lay on it. The rustle of the countess’s silk dress diverted him.
‘Well, there, now we can sit down quietly,’ Countess Lydia Ivanovna said with a nervous smile, hurriedly squeezing between the table and the sofa, ‘and have a talk over tea.’
After a few words of preparation, Countess Lydia Ivanovna, breathing heavily and flushing, handed Alexei Alexandrovich the letter she had received.
Having read the letter, he was silent for a long time.
‘I don’t suppose I have the right to refuse her,’ he said, timidly raising his eyes.
‘My friend! You see no evil in anyone!’
‘On the contrary, I see that everything is evil. But is it fair? ...’
There was indecision in his face, a seeking for counsel, support and guidance in a matter incomprehensible to him.
‘No,’ Countess Lydia Ivanovna interrupted him. ‘There is a limit to everything. I can understand immorality,’ she said, not quite sincerely, because she never could understand what led women to immorality, ‘but I do not understand cruelty - and to whom? To you! How can she stay in the same town with you? No, live and learn. And I am learning to understand your loftiness and her baseness.’
‘And who will throw the stone?’38 said Alexei Alexandrovich, obviously pleased with his role. ‘I forgave everything and therefore cannot deprive her of what for her is a need of love - love for her son ...’
‘But is it love, my friend? Is it sincere? Granted, you forgave, you forgive ... but do we have the right to influence the soul of this angel? He considers her dead. He prays for her and asks God to forgive her sins ... And it’s better that way. Otherwise what will he think?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Alexei Alexandrovich, obviously agreeing.
Countess Lydia Ivanovna covered her face with her hands and remained silent. She was praying.
‘If you ask my advice,’ she said, finishing her prayer and uncovering her face, ‘I advise you not to do it. Can’t I see how you’re suffering, how it has opened all your wounds? But suppose you forget about yourself, as always. What can it lead to? To new sufferings on your part, to torment for the child? If there’s anything human left in her, she herself should not wish for that. No, I have no hesitation in advising against it, and, if you allow me, I will write to her.’
Alexei Alexandrovich consented, and Countess Lydia Ivanovna wrote the following letter in French:
Dear Madam: A reminder of you may lead to questions on the part of your son which could not be answered without instilling into the child’s soul a spirit of condemnation of what should be holy for him, and therefore I beg you to take your husband’s refusal in the spirit of Christian love. I pray the Almighty to be merciful to you.
This letter achieved the secret goal that Countess Lydia Ivanovna had concealed from herself. It offended Anna to the depths of her soul.
Alexei Alexandrovich, for his part, on returning home from Lydia Ivanovna‘s, was unable for the rest of the day to give himself to his usual occupations and find that peace of mind of a saved and believing man which he had felt before.
The memory of the wife who was so guilty before him and before whom he was so saintly, as Countess Lydia Ivanovna had rightly told him, should not have upset him; yet he was not at peace: he could not understand the book he was reading, could not drive away the painful memories of his relations with her, of those mistakes that he, as it now seemed to him, had made regarding her. The memory of how he had received her confession of unfaithfulness on the way back from the races (and in particular that he had demanded only external propriety from her and had made no challenge to a duel), tormented him like remorse. The memory of the letter he had written her also tormented him, and in particular his forgiveness, needed by no one, and his taking care of another man’s child, burned his heart with shame and remorse.
And he now experienced exactly the same sense of shame and remorse, going over all his past with her and remembering the awkward words with which, after long hesitation, he had proposed to her.
