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 "Ah! you find a husband cruel because he gives his wife perfect freedom, gives her the protection of an honest, noble name on the sole condition that she respect the laws of propriety? You call that cruelty?"

"It is worse than cruelty; it is cowardice, if you insist on knowing," cried Anna, with an outburst of anger, and rising, she started to go.

"No," cried he, in his piping voice, which was now a tone higher than usual; and seizing her by the arm with his great, bony fingers so roughly that one of Anna's bracelets left a red print on her flesh, he forced her back into her place.

"Cowardice, indeed! If you wish to employ that word, apply it to her who abandons her son and husband for a lover, and nevertheless eats her husband's bread."

Anna bowed her head; she not only did not say what she had said the evening before to her lover, that he was her husband while her husband was in the way—she did not even think it. She appreciated all the justice of his words, and she replied in a low voice:—

"You cannot judge my position more severely than I do myself; but why do you say all this?"

"Why do I say this?" continued he as angrily as ever; "so that you may know that, since you have paid no attention to my wishes, and have broken the rules of propriety, I shall take measures to put an end to this state of affairs."

"Soon, very soon, it will terminate itself," said Anna, and again at the thought of that death which she felt near at hand, and now so desirable, her eyes filled with tears.

"Sooner even than you and your lover have dreamed of! You need to make atonement by keen suffering ...."

"Alekseï Aleksandrovitch! I do not say that this is not magnanimous; but it is not gentlemanly to strike one who is down."

"You only think of yourself: the suffering of one who has been your husband is of little interest to you;