Some people lay stress on the spiritual pain which Sofya Andreyevna must have experienced when she learned that Leo Nikolaevitch had left her. There is no doubt that this pain must have been very severe, particularly at first. But one must not blame others for the sufferings which are the work of the sufferer himself. If my own negligence is the cause of a man slipping off the roof and falling on my head I cannot blame him for the bruises he has caused me by his fall. It is as unjust to blame Leo Nikolaevitch for the suffering caused to Sofya Andreyevna by his departure, which was provoked by herself. Moreover, sufferings which are the result of our own mistakes are often beneficial. So in this instance, if Sofya Andreyevna, toward the end of the life of Leo Nikolaevitch, ever displayed the faintest gleams of consciousness of the great wrong she had done him, it was only at the time of her heaviest suffering on account of his leaving her. And therefore one may regret the causes which called forth Leo Nikolaevitch's departure, but not that the emotional shock given Sofya Andreyevna by it opened her eyes, if only for a few instants, to the true significance of her behaviour to her husband. If it should seem strange to anyone that Leo Nikolaevitch, even after he had left home, so dreaded an interview with Sofya Andreyevna, that is only because the mental condition in which, as Leo Nikolaevitch well knew, she was at that time is too little known. When he left Yasnaya Polyana Leo Nikolaevitch firmly and unhesitatingly decided to cut himself off from his family, and therefore while he was still hoping to live independently, he naturally avoided interviews with Sofya Andreyevna, who would with all her energies, and without scruple as to the means employed, have hindered his realising his plan. When he was laid up at Astapavo and foresaw the possibility of death being at hand, it was just as natural that he should have felt the need of that spiritual tranquillity to which every dying man has a right. And that Sofya Andreyevna's condition at that time really was such that she could have brought nothing to his death-bed but deception, vanity, material importunities, fuss and noise, that is well known by all who have had the opportunity of watching at close quarters her behaviour not only in all Leo Nikolaevitch's serious illnesses in later years and during the last months of his life at Yasnaya Polyana, but also during the first days after he had gone away, and during her stay in his neighbourhood at Astapovo, and by his bedside during the last unconscious moments, and during the first hours after his death. Anyone who saw Sofya Andreyevna under all these conditions cannot but acknowledge that Leo Nikolaevitch showed great foresight in so persistently avoiding interviews with her while she was in that condition. A personal interview between them at that time could not only add nothing to what he had told her in his last