"Well, God be with you," she said at the door of the study, where

a shaded candle and a decanter of water were already put by his

armchair. "And I'll write to Moscow."

He pressed her hand, and again kissed it.

"All the same he's a good man; truthful, good-hearted, and

remarkable in his own line," Anna said to herself going back to

her room, as though she were defending him to someone who had

attacked him and said that one could not love him. "But why is

it his ears stick out so strangely? Or has he had his hair cut?"

Precisely at twelve o'clock, when Anna was still sitting at her

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writing table, finishing a letter to Dolly, she heard the sound

of measured steps in slippers, and Alexey Alexandrovitch, freshly

washed and combed, with a book under his arm, came in to her.

"It's time, it's time," said he, with a meaning smile, and he

went into their bedroom.

"And what right had he to look at him like that?" thought Anna,

recalling Vronsky's glance at Alexey Alexandrovitch.

Undressing, she went into the bedroom; but her face had none of

the eagerness which, during her stay in Moscow, had fairly

flashed from her eyes and her smile; on the contrary, now the

fire seemed quenched in her, hidden somewhere far away.




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