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 He had no need to say that. Darya Aleksandrovna understood it as soon as she looked into his face. She pitied him, and her faith in her friend's innocence was shaken.

"Oh! it is terrible, terrible! but is it true that you are really decided about the divorce?"

"I have decided to take this last measure. There was nothing else for me to do."

"Don't do it! Don't do it!" cried Dolly, with tears in her eyes. "No, don't do it!"

"The most dreadful thing about a misfortune of this kind is that one cannot bear his cross as in any other,—a loss or a death,—and here one must do something," said he, apparently divining Dolly's thought. "One must escape from the humiliating position in which one is placed; on ne peut vivre a trois!"

"I understand, I understand perfectly," replied Dolly, bowing her head. She was silent, thinking of herself, of her own domestic troubles; but suddenly with an energetic movement she raised her head, and with a suppli-cating gesture she folded her hands.

"But wait," she said; "you are a Christian, think of her! What will become of her if you abandon her?"

"I have thought of it, Darya Aleksandrovna. I have thought a great deal about it," said Alekseï Aleksandrovitch. His face was covered with red blotches and his troubled eyes looked straight at her. Darya Aleksandrovna pitied him now from the bottom of her heart. "I did this very thing after she herself had told me of her disgrace. I put everything on the old footing. I gave her the chance of reformation. I tried to save her. What did she do then? She paid no attention to the easiest of demands,—observance of propriety!" he added, choking. "One can save a man who does not want to perish; but if his whole nature is so corrupt, so rotten, that ruin itself seems salvation, what can be done?"

"Everything, except divorce," replied Darya Aleksandrovna.

"What do you mean by everything?"