saw it, and his face expressed that utter subjection, that slavish devotion, which had done so much to win her.

`I see something has happened. Do you suppose I can be at peace, knowing you have a trouble I am not sharing? Tell me, for God's sake!' he repeated imploringly.

`Yes, I shan't be able to forgive him if he does not realize all the significance of it. Better not tell; why put him to the proof?' she thought, still staring at him in the same way, and feeling that her hand that held the leaf was trembling more and more.

`For God's sake!' he repeated, taking her hand.

`Shall I tell you?'

`Yes, yes, yes...'

`I am pregnant,' she said, softly and slowly.

The leaf in her hand shook more violently, but she did not take her eyes off him, watching how he would take it. He turned pale, would have said something, but stopped; he dropped her hand, and his head sank on his breast. `Yes, he realizes all the significance of the fact,' she thought, and gratefully she pressed his hand.

But she was mistaken in thinking he realized the significance of the news as she, a woman, realized it. On hearing it, he felt come upon him with tenfold intensity that strange feeling of loathing of someone. But, at the same time, he realized that the turning point he had been longing for had come now; that it was impossible to go on concealing things from her husband, and it was inevitable in one way or another that they should soon put an end to their unnatural position. But, besides that, her emotion physically affected him in the same way. He looked at her with a look of submissive tenderness, kissed her hand, got up, and, in silence, paced up and down the terrace.

`Yes,' he said, going up to her resolutely. `Neither you nor I have looked on our relations as a passing amusement, and now our fate is sealed. It is absolutely necessary to put an end' - he looked round as he spoke - `to the deception in which we are living.'

`Put an end? Put an end how, Alexei?' she said softly.

She was calmer now, and her face lighted up with a tender smile.

`Leave your husband and make our life one.'

`It is one as it is,' she answered, scarcely audibly.

`Yes, but completely, completely.'

`But how, Alexei - tell me how?' she said in melancholy mockery at the hopelessness of her own situation. `Is there any way out of such a situation? Am I not the wife of my husband?'

`There is a way out of every situation. We must take our stand,' he said. `Anything's better than the situation in which you're living. Of course, I see how you torture yourself over everything - the world, and your son, and your husband.'

`Oh, not over my husband,' she said, with a plain smile. `I don't know him, I don't think of him. He doesn't exist.'

`You're not speaking sincerely. I know you. You worry about him too.'