she should observe decorum,” he said, getting heated. “One may save anyone who does not want to be ruined; but if the whole nature is so corrupt, so depraved, that ruin itself seems to be her salvation, what’s to be done?”

“Anything, only not divorce!” answered Darya Alexandrovna

“But what is anything?”

“No, it is awful! She will be no one’s wife, she will be lost!”

“What can I do?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, raising his shoulders and his eyebrows. The recollection of his wife’s last act had so incensed him that he had become frigid, as at the beginning of the conversation. “I am very grateful for your sympathy, but I must be going,”