KARENIN (reading). Must be removed? "By the time this letter reaches you, I shall no longer exist. All I ask you is to be happy, and whenever you think of me, think tender thoughts. God bless you both. Good-bye. FEDYA." LISA. He's killed himself! KARENIN (going hurriedly up stage L. and calls of). My secretary! Call back my secretary! LISA. Fedya! Fedya, darling! KARENIN. Lisa! LISA. It's not true! It's not true that I've stopped loving him! He's the only man in all the world I love! And now I've killed him! I've killed him as surely as if I'd murdered him with my own two hands! KARENIN. Lisa, for God's sake! LISA. Stop it! Don't come near me! Don't be angry with me, Victor. You see I, too, cannot lie! CURTAIN ACT II SCENE I A dirty, ill-lighted underground dive; people are lying around drinking, sleeping, playing cards and making love. Near the front a small table at which FEDYA sits; he is in rags and has fallen very low. By his side is PETUSHKOV, a delicate spiritual man, with long yellow hair and beard. Both are rather drunk. Candle light is the only lighting in this Scene. PETUSHKOV (R.C. of table C.). I know. I know. Well, that's real love. So what happened then? FEDYA (L. C. of table C., pensively). You might perhaps expect a girl of our own class, tenderly brought up, to be capable of sacrificing for the man she loved, but this girl was a gypsy, reared in greed, yet she gave me the purest sort of self-sacrificing love. She'd have done anything for nothing. Such contrasts are amazing. PETUSHKOV. I see. In painting we call that value. Only to realize bright red fully when there is green around it. But that's not the point. What happened? FEDYA. Oh, we parted. I felt it wasn't right to go on taking, taking where I couldn't give. So one night we were having dinner in a little restaurant, I told her we'd have to say good-bye. My heart was so wrung all the time I could hardly help crying. PETUSHKOV. And she? FEDYA. Oh, she was awfully unhappy, but she knew I was right. So we kissed each other a long while, and she went back to her gypsy troupe --(Slowly.) Maybe she was glad to go---- [A pause. PETUSHKOV. I wonder. FEDYA. Yes. The single good act of my soul was not ruining that girl. PETUSHKOV. Was it from pity? FEDYA. I sorry for her? Oh, never. Quite the contrary. I worshipped her unclouded sincerity, the energy of her clear, strong will, and God in Heaven, how she sang. And probably she is singing now, for some one else. Yes, I always looked up at her from beneath, as you do at some radiance in the sky. I loved her really. And now it's a tender beautiful memory. PETUSHKOV. I understand. It was ideal, and you left it like that.