d the most legitimate desire--he wishes that your
children should have a name."

"What children?" Anna said, not looking at Dolly, and half
closing her eyes.

"Annie and those to come..."

"He need not trouble on that score; I shall have no more
children."

"How can you tell that you won't?"

"I shall not, because I don't wish it." And, in spite of all her
emotion, Anna smiled, as she caught the naive expression of
curiosity, wonder, and horror on Dolly's face.

"The doctor told me after my illness..."

"Impossible!" said Dolly, opening her eyes wide.

For her this was one of those discoveries the consequences and
deductions from which are so immense that all that one feels for
the first instant is that it is impossible to take it all in, and
that one will have to reflect a great, great deal upon it.

This discovery, suddenly throwing light on all those families of
one or two children, which had hitherto been so incomprehensible
to her, aroused so many ideas, reflections, and contradictory
emotions, that she had nothing to say, and simply gazed with
wide-open eyes of wonder at Anna. This was the very thing she
had been dreaming of, but now learning that it was possible, she
was horrified. She felt that it was too simple a solution of too
complicated a problem.

_"N'est-ce pas immoral?"_ was all she said, after a brief pause.

"Why so? Think, I have a choice between two alternatives: either
to be with child, that is an invalid, or to be the friend and
companion of my husband--practically my husband," Anna said in a
tone intentionally superficial and frivolous.

"Yes, yes," said Darya Alexandrovna, hearing the very arguments
she had used to herself, and not finding the same force in them
as before.

"For you, for other people," said Anna, as though divining her
thoughts, "there may be reason to hesitate; but for me.... You
must consider, I am not his wife; he loves me as long as he
loves me. And how am I to keep his love? Not like this!"

She moved her white hands in a curve before her waist with
extraordinary rapidity, as happens during moments of excitement;
ideas and memories rushed into Darya Alexandrovna's head. "I,"
she thought, "did not keep my attraction for Stiva; he left me
for others, and the first woman for whom he betrayed me did not
keep him by being always pretty and lively. He deserted her and
took another. And can Anna attract and keep Count Vronsky in
that way? If that is w