day before in a toy shop with
such love and sorrow.

Chapter 31

As intensely as Anna had longed to see her son, and long as she
had been thinking of it and preparing herself for it, she had
not in the least expected that seeing him would affect her so
deeply. On getting back to her lonely rooms in the hotel she
could not for a long while understand why she was there. "Yes,
it's all over, and I am again alone," she said to herself, and
without taking off her hat she sat down in a low chair by the
hearth. Fixing her eyes on a bronze clock standing on a table
between the windows, she tried to think.

The French maid brought from abroad came in to suggest she should
dress. She gazed at her wonderingly and said, "Presently." A
footman offered her coffee. "Later on," she said.

The Italian nurse, after having taken the baby out in her best,
came in with her, and brought her to Anna. The plump, well-fed
little baby, on seeing her mother, as she always did, held out
her fat little hands, and with a smile on her toothless mouth,
began, like a fish with a float, bobbing her fingers up and down
the starched folds of her embroidered skirt, making them rustle.
It was impossible not to smile, not to kiss the baby, impossible
not to hold out a finger for her to clutch, crowing and prancing
all over; impossible not to offer her a lip which she sucked into
her little mouth by way of a kiss. And all this Anna did, and
took her in her arms and made her dance, and kissed her fresh
little cheek and bare little elbows; but at the sight of this
child it was plainer than ever to her that the feeling she had
for her could not be called love in comparison with what she felt
for Seryozha. Everything in this baby was charming, but for some
reason all this did not go deep to her heart. On her first
child, though the child of an unloved father, had been
concentrated all the love that had never found satisfaction. Her
baby girl had been born in the most painful circumstances and had
not had a hundredth part of the care and thought which had been
concentrated on her first child. Besides, in the little girl
everything was still in the future, while Seryozha was by now
almost a personality, and a personality dearly loved. In him
there was a conflict of thought and feeling; he understood her,
he loved her, he judged her, she thought, recalling his words and
his eyes. And she was forever--not physically only but
spiritually--d