And in spite of the complete, as he supposed, contempt and indifference he now felt for his wife, at the bottom of his heart Alexey Alexandrovitch still had one feeling left in regard to her--a disinclination to see her free to throw in her lot with Vronsky, so that her crime would be to her advantage.

The mere notion of this so exasperated Alexey Alexandrovitch, that directly it rose to his mind he groaned with inward agony, and got up and changed his place in the carriage, and for a long while after, he sat with scowling brows, wrapping his numbed and bony legs in the fleecy rug.

"Apart from formal divorce, One might still do like Karibanov, Paskudin, and that good fellow Dram--that is, separate from one's wife," he went on thinking, when he had regained his composure.

But this step too presented the same drawback of public scandal as a divorce, and what was more, a separation, quite as much as a regular divorce, flung his wife into the arms of Vronsky.

" No, it's out of the question, out of the question!" he said again, twisting his rug about him again.