She was plunged in these thoughts, which so engrossed her that
she left off thinking of her own position, when the carriage drew
up at the steps of her house. It was only when she saw the
porter running out to meet her that she remembered she had sent
the note and the telegram.
"Is there an answer?" she inquired.
"I'll see this minute," answered the porter, and glancing into
his room, he took out and gave her the thin square envelope of a
telegram. "I can't come before ten o'clock.--Vronsky," she
read.
"And hasn't the messenger come back?"
"No," answered the porter.
"Then, since it's so, I know what I must do," she said, and
feeling a vague fury and craving for revenge rising up within
her, she ran upstairs. "I'll go to him myself. Before going
away forever, I'll tell him all. Never have I hated anyone as I
hate that man!" she thought. Seeing his hat on the rack, she
shuddered with aversion. She did not consider that his telegram
was an answer to her telegram and that he had not yet received
her note. She pictured him to herself as talking calmly to his
mother and Princess Sorokina and rejoicing at her sufferings.
"Yes, I must go quickly," she said, not knowing yet where she was
going. She longed to get away as quickly as possible from the
feelings she had gone through in that awful house. The servants,
the walls, the things in that house--all aroused repulsion and
hatred in her and lay like a weight upon her.
"Yes, I must go to the railway station, and if he's not there,
then go there and catch him." Anna looked at the railway
timetable in the newspapers. An evening train went at two
minutes past eight. "Yes, I shall be in time." She gave orders
for the other horses to be put in the carriage, and packed in a
traveling-bag the things needed for a few days. She knew she
would never come back here again.
Among the plans that came into her head she vaguely determined
that after what would happen at the station or at the countess's
house, she would go as far as the first town on the Nizhni road
and stop there.
Dinner was on the table; she went up, but the smell of the bread
and cheese was enough to make her feel that all food was
disgusting. She ordered the carriage and went out. The house
threw a shadow now right across the street, but it was a bright
evening and still warm in the sunshine. Annushka, who came down
with her things, and Pyotr, who put the things in the carriage,
and the coachman, evidently out of humor, were all hateful to
her, and irritated her by their words and actions.