She came out into the middle of the room and stood facing Dolly,

with her arms pressed tightly across her chest. In her white

dressing gown her figure seemed more than usually grand and

broad. She bent her head, and with shining, wet eyes looked from

under her brows at Dolly, a thin little pitiful figure in her

patched dressing jacket and nightcap, shaking all over with

emotion.

"It is only those two creatures that I love, and one excludes the

other. I can't have them together, and that's the only thing I

want. And since I can't have that, I don't care about the rest.

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I don't care about anything, anything. And it will end one way

or another, and so I can't, I don't like to talk of it. So don't

blame me, don't judge me for anything. You can't with your pure

heart understand all that I'm suffering." She went up, sat down

beside Dolly, and with a guilty look, peeped into her face and

took her hand.

"What are you thinking? What are you thinking about me? Don't

despise me. I don't deserve contempt. I'm simply unhappy. If

anyone is unhappy, I am," she articulated, and turning away, she

burst into tears.

Left alone, Darya Alexandrovna said her prayers and went to bed.

She had felt for Anna with all her heart while she was speaking

to her, but now she could not force herself to think of her. The

memories of home and of her children rose up in her imagination

with a peculiar charm quite new to her, with a sort of new

brilliance. That world of her own seemed to her now so sweet and

precious that she would not on any account spend an extra day

outside it, and she made up her mind that she would certainly go

back next day.

Anna meantime went back to her boudoir, took a wine glass and

dropped into it several drops of a medicine, of which the

principal ingredient was morphine. After drinking it off and

sitting still a little while, she went into her bedroom in a

soothed and more cheerful frame of mind.

When she went into the bedroom, Vronsky looked intently at her.

He was looking for traces of the conversation which he knew that,

staying so long in Dolly's room, she must have had with her. But

in her expression of restrained excitement, and of a sort of

reserve, he could find nothing but the beauty that always

bewitched him afresh though he was used to it, the consciousness

of it, and the desire that it should affect him. He did not want

to ask her what they had been talking of, but he hoped that she

would tell him something of her own accord. But she only said: "I am so glad you like Dolly. You do, don't you?"




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