“for mercy’s sake, think of the children; they are not to blame! I am to blame, and punish me, make me expiate my fault. Anything I can do, I am ready to do anything! I am to blame, no words can express how much I am to blame! But, Dolly, forgive me!”

She sat down. He listened to her hard, heavy breathing, and he was unutterably sorry for her. She tried several times to begin to speak, but could not. He waited.

“You remember the children, Stiva, to play with them; but I remember them, and know that this means their ruin,” she said—�obviously one of the phrases she had more than once repeated to herself in the course of the last few days.

She had called him “Stiva,” and he glanced at her with gratitude, and