But without looking in the glass, she thought that even now it

was not too late; and she thought of Sergey Ivanovitch, who was

always particularly attentive to her, of Stiva's good-hearted

friend, Turovtsin, who had helped her nurse her children through

the scarlatina, and was in love with her. And there was someone

else, a quite young man, who--her husband had told her it as a

joke--thought her more beautiful than either of her sisters. And

the most passionate and impossible romances rose before Darya

Alexandrovna's imagination. "Anna did quite right, and certainly

I shall never reproach her for it. She is happy, she makes

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another person happy, and she's not broken down as I am, but most

likely just as she always was, bright, clever, open to every

impression," thought Darya Alexandrovna,--and a sly smile curved

her lips, for, as she pondered on Anna's love affair, Darya

Alexandrovna constructed on parallel lines an almost identical

love affair for herself, with an imaginary composite figure, the

ideal man who was in love with her. She, like Anna, confessed

the whole affair to her husband. And the amazement and

perplexity of Stepan Arkadyevitch at this avowal made her smile.

In such daydreams she reached the turning of the highroad that

led to Vozdvizhenskoe.




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