" Can it be he sees her? Why didn't I ask him! No, no, reconciliation is impossible.

Even if we remain in the same house, we are strangers--strangers forever!" She repeated again with special significance the word so dreadful to her.

" And how I loved him! my God, how I loved him!....

How I loved him! And now don't I love him? Don't I love him more than before? The most horrible thing is," she began, but did not finish her thought, because Matrona Philimonovna put her head in at the door.

"Let us send for my brother," she said; "he can get a dinner anyway, or we shall have the children getting nothing to eat till six again, like yesterday.