"Even after marriage?" said the ambassador's wife playfully.

"'It's never too late to mend.'" The attaché repeated the

English proverb.

"Just so," Betsy agreed; "one must make mistakes and correct

them. What do you think about it?" she turned to Anna, who, with

a faintly perceptible resolute smile on her lips, was listening

in silence to the conversation.

"I think," said Anna, playing with the glove she had taken off,

"I think...of so many men, so many minds, certainly so many

hearts, so many kinds of love."

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Vronsky was gazing at Anna, and with a fainting heart waiting for

what she would say. He sighed as after a danger escaped when she

uttered these words.

Anna suddenly turned to him.

"Oh, I have had a letter from Moscow. They write me that Kitty

Shtcherbatskaya's very ill."

"Really?" said Vronsky, knitting his brows.

Anna looked sternly at him.

"That doesn't interest you?"

"On the contrary, it does, very much. What was it exactly they

told you, if I may know?" he questioned.

Anna got up and went to Betsy.

"Give me a cup of tea," she said, standing at her table.

While Betsy was pouring out the tea, Vronsky went up to Anna.

"What is it they write to you?" he repeated.

"I often think men have no understanding of what's not honorable

though they're always talking of it," said Anna, without

answering him. "I've wanted to tell you so a long while," she

added, and moving a few steps away, she sat down at a table in a

corner covered with albums.

"I don't quite understand the meaning of your words," he said,

handing her the cup.

She glanced towards the sofa beside her, and he instantly sat

down.

"Yes, I have been wanting to tell you," she said, not looking at

him. "You behaved wrongly, very wrongly."

"Do you suppose I don't know that I've acted wrongly? But who

was the cause of my doing so?"

"What do you say that to me for?" she said, glancing severely at

him.

"You know what for," he answered boldly and joyfully, meeting her

glance and not dropping his eyes.

Not he, but she, was confused.

"That only shows you have no heart," she said. But her eyes said

that she knew he had a heart, and that was why she was afraid of

him.

"What you spoke of just now was a mistake, and not love."




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