“You have so much influence with Anna, she is so fond of you,” he said; “do help me.”
Darya Alexandrovna looked with timid inquiry into his energetic face, which under the lime-trees was continually being lighted up in patches by the sunshine, and then passing into complete shadow again. She waited for him to say more, but he walked in silence beside her, scratching with his cane in the gravel.
“You have come to see us, you, the only woman of Anna’s former friends—I don’t count Princess Varvara—but I know that you have done this not because you regard our position as normal, but because, understanding all the difficulty of the position, you still love her and want to be a help to her. Have I understood you rightly?” he asked, looking round at her.
“Oh, yes,” answered Darya Alexandrovna, putting down her sunshade, “but. …”
“No,” he broke in, and unconsciously, oblivious of the awkward position into which he was putting his companion, he stopped abruptly, so that she had to stop short too. “No one feels more deeply and intensely than I do all the difficulty of Anna’s position; and that you may well understand, if you do me the honor of supposing I have any heart. I am to blame for that position, and that is why I feel it.”
“I understand,” said Darya Alexandrovna, involuntarily admiring the sincerity and firmness with which he said this. “But just because you feel yourself responsible, you exaggerate it, I am afraid,” she said. “Her position in the world is difficult, I can well understand.”
“In the world it is hell!” he brought out quickly, frowning darkly. “You can’t imagine moral sufferings greater than what she went through in Petersburg in that fortnight … and I beg you to believe it.”