face, and saw that the shrewd, gray eyes were laughing, and seemed to know all about it already.

“You know my name?” Alexey Alexandrovitch resumed.

“I know you and the good” — again he caught a moth — “work you are doing, like every Russian,” said the lawyer, bowing.

Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed, plucking up his courage. But having once made up his mind he went on in his shrill voice, without timidity — or hesitation, accentuating here and there a word.

“I have the misfortune,” Alexey Alexandrovitch began, “to have been deceived in my married life, and I desire to break off all relations with my wife by legal means — that is, to be divorced, but to do this so that my son may not remain with his mother.”