Darya Alexandrovna carried out her intention and went to see

Anna. She was sorry to annoy her sister and to do anything Levin

disliked. She quite understood how right the Levins were in not

wishing to have anything to do with Vronsky. But she felt she

must go and see Anna, and show her that her feelings could not be

changed, in spite of the change in her position. That she might

be independent of the Levins in this expedition, Darya

Alexandrovna sent to the village to hire horses for the drive;

but Levin learning of it went to her to protest.

"What makes you suppose that I dislike your going? But, even if

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I did dislike it, I should still more dislike your not taking my

horses," he said. "You never told me that you were going for

certain. Hiring horses in the village is disagreeable to me,

and, what's of more importance, they'll undertake the job and

never get you there. I have horses. And if you don't want to

wound me, you'll take mine."

Darya Alexandrovna had to consent, and on the day fixed Levin had

ready for his sister-in-law a set of four horses and relays,

getting them together from the farm- and saddle-horses--not at

all a smart-looking set, but capable of taking Darya Alexandrovna

the whole distance in a single day. At that moment, when horses

were wanted for the princess, who was going, and for the midwife,

it was a difficult matter for Levin to make up the number, but

the duties of hospitality would not let him allow Darya

Alexandrovna to hire horses when staying in his house. Moreover,

he was well aware that the twenty roubles that would be asked for

the journey were a serious matter for her; Darya Alexandrovna's

pecuniary affairs, which were in a very unsatisfactory state,

were taken to heart by the Levins as if they were their own.

Darya Alexandrovna, by Levin's advice, started before daybreak.

The road was good, the carriage comfortable, the horses trotted

along merrily, and on the box, besides the coachman, sat the

counting-house clerk, whom Levin was sending instead of a groom

for greater security. Darya Alexandrovna dozed and waked up only

on reaching the inn where the horses were to be changed.

After drinking tea at the same well-to-do peasant's with whom

Levin had stayed on the way to Sviazhsky's, and chatting with the

women about their children, and with the old man about Count

Vronsky, whom the latter praised very highly, Darya Alexandrovna,

at ten o'clock, went on again. At home, looking after her

children, she had no time to think. So now, after this journey

of four hours, all the thoughts she had suppressed before rushed

swarming into her brain, and she thought over all her life as she

never had before, and from the most different points of view.

Her thoughts seemed strange even to herself. At first she

thought about the children, about whom she was uneasy, although

the princess and Kitty (she reckoned more upon her) had promised

to look after them. "If only Masha does not begin her naughty

tricks, if Grisha isn't kicked by a horse, and Lily's stomach

isn't upset again!" she thought. But these questions of the

present were succeeded by questions of the immediate future. She

began thinking how she had to get a new flat in Moscow for the

coming winter, to renew the drawing room furniture, and to make

her elder girl a cloak. Then questions of the more remote future

occurred to her: how she was to place her children in the world.

"The girls are all right," she thought; "but the boys?"




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