Pagina 192 de 2288

"Yes. I know him. I could not look at him without feeling sorry

for him. We both know him. He's good-hearted, but he's proud, and

now he's so humiliated. What touched me most...." (and here Anna

guessed what would touch Dolly most) "he's tortured by two

things: that he's ashamed for the children's sake, and that,

loving you-yes, yes, loving you beyond everything on earth," she

hurriedly interrupted Dolly, who would have answered-"he has hurt

you, pierced you to the heart. 'No, no, she cannot forgive me,'

he keeps saying."

Dolly looked dreamily away beyond her sister-in-law as she

listened to her words.

"Yes, I can see that his position is awful; it's worse for the

guilty than the innocent," she said, "if he feels that all the

misery comes from his fault. But how am I to forgive him, how am

I to be his wife again after her? For me to live with him now

would be torture, just because I love my past love for him...."