"However that may be, you are still, to my sorrow, my wife. I cannot drive you away, so this is what I propose. You can go to Lavriki--to-day if you like--and live there! There is an excellent house there, as you know. You shall have every thing you can want, besides your allowance. Do you consent?" Varvara Pavlovna raised her embroidered handkerchief to her face. "I have already told you," she said, with a nervous twitching of her lips, "that I will agree to any arrangement you may please to make for me. At present I have only to ask you--will you at least allow me to thank you for your generosity?" "No thanks, I beg of you--we shall do much better without them," hastily exclaimed Lavretsky. "Then, he added, approaching the door, I may depend upon--" "To-morrow I will be at Lavriki," replied Varvara Pavlovna, rising respectfully from her seat. "But Fedor Ivanich--" ("She no longer familiarly called him Theodore). "What do you wish to say?" "I am aware that I have not yet in any way deserved forgiveness. But may I hope that, at least, in time--" "Ah, Varvara Pavlovna," cried Lavretsky, interrupting her, "you are a clever woman; but I, too, am not a fool. I know well that you have no need of forgiveness. Besides, I forgave you long ago; but there has always been a gulf between you and me." "I shall know how to submit," answered Varvara Pavlovna, and bowed her head. "I have not forgotten my fault. I should not have wondered if I had learnt that you had even been glad to hear of my death," she added in a soft voice, with a slight wave of her hand towards the newspaper, which was lying on the table where Lavretsky had forgotten it. Lavretsky shuddered. The _feuilleton_ had a pencil mark against it. Varvara Pavlovna gazed at him with an expression of even greater humility than before on her face. She looked very handsome at that moment. Her grey dress, made by a Parisian milliner, fitted closely to her pliant figure, which seemed almost like that of a girl of seventeen. Her soft and slender neck, circled by a white collar, her bosom's gentle movement under the influence of her steady breathing, her arms and hands, on which she wore neither bracelets nor rings, her whole figure, from her lustrous hair to the tip of the scarcely visible _bottine_, all was so artistic! Lavretsky eyed her with a look of hate, feeling hardly able to abstain from crying _brava_, hardly able to abstain from striking her down--and went away. An hour later he was already on the road to Vasilievskoe, and two hours later Varvara Pavlovna ordered the best carriage on hire in the town to be got for her, put on a simple straw hat with a black veil, and a modest mantilla, left Justine in charge of Ada, and went to the Kalitines'. From the inquiries Justine had made, Madame Lavretsky had learnt that her husband was in the habit of going there every day. XXXVI.