"But I believe Anna Arkadyevna refuses a divorce, if I make it a
condition to leave me my son. I replied in that sense, and
supposed that the matter was ended. I consider it at an end,"
shrieked Alexey Alexandrovitch.

"But, for heaven's sake, don't get hot!" said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, touching his brother-in-law's knee. "The matter is
not ended. If you will allow me to recapitulate, it was like
this: when you parted, you were as magnanimous as could possibly
be; you were ready to give her everything--freedom, divorce even.
She appreciated that. No, don't think that. She did appreciate
it--to such a degree that at the first moment, feeling how she
had wronged you, she did not consider and could not consider
everything. She gave up everything. But experience, time, have
shown that her position is unbearable, impossible."

"The life of Anna Arkadyevna can have no interest for me," Alexey
Alexandrovitch put in, lifting his eyebrows.

"Allow me to disbelieve that," Stepan Arkadyevitch replied
gently. "Her position is intolerable for her, and of no benefit
to anyone whatever. She has deserved it, you will say. She
knows that and asks you for nothing; she says plainly that she
dare not ask you. But I, all of us, her relatives, all who love
her, beg you, entreat you. Why should she suffer? Who is any
the better for it?"