“No,” Countess Lidia Ivanovna interrupted him; “there are limits to everything. I can understand immorality,” she said, not quite truthfully, since she never could understand that which leads women to immorality; “but I don’t understand cruelty: to whom? to you! How can she stay in the town where you are? No, the longer one lives the more one learns. And I’m learning to understand your loftiness and her baseness.”
“Who is to throw a stone?” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, unmistakably pleased with the part he had to play. “I have forgiven all, and so I cannot deprive her of what is exacted by love in her—by her love for her son. …”
“But is that love, my friend? Is it sincere? Admitting that you have forgiven—that you forgive—have we the right to work on the feelings of that angel? He looks on her as dead. He prays for her, and beseeches God to have mercy on her sins. And it is better so. But now what will he think?”
“I had not thought of that,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, evidently agreeing.
Countess Lidia Ivanovna hid her face in her hands and was silent. She was praying.
“If you ask my advice,” she said, having finished her prayer and uncovered her face, “I do not advise you to do this. Do you suppose I don’t see how you are suffering, how this has torn open your wounds? But supposing that, as always, you don’t think of yourself, what can it lead to?—to fresh suffering for you, to torture for the child. If there were a trace of humanity left in her, she ought not to wish for it herself. No, I have no hesitation in saying I advise not, and if you will entrust it to me, I will write to her.”
And Alexey Alexandrovitch consented, and Countess Lidia Ivanovna sent the following letter in French: