of
seventeen, she had gone with her aunt to Troitsa. "Riding, too.
Was that really me, with red hands? How much that seemed to me
then splendid and out of reach has become worthless, while what
I had then has gone out of my reach forever! Could I ever have
believed then that I could come to such humiliation? How
conceited and self-satisfied he will be when he gets my note!
But I will show him.... How horrid that paint smells! Why is it
they're always painting and building? _Modes et robes,_" she read.
A man bowed to her. It was Annushka's husband. "Our parasites";
she remembered how Vronsky had said that. "Our? Why our?
What's so awful is that one can't tear up the past by its roots.
One can't tear it out, but one can hide one's memory of it. And
I'll hide it." And then she thought of her past with Alexey
Alexandrovitch, of how she had blotted the memory of it out of
her life. "Dolly will think I'm leaving my second husband, and
so I certainly must be in the wrong. As if I cared to be right!
I can't help it!" she said, and she wanted to cry. But at once
she fell to wondering what those two girls could be smiling
about. "Love, most likely. They don't know how dreary it is,
how low.... The boulevard and the children. Three boys running,
playing at horses. Seryozha! And I'm losing everything and not
getting him back. Yes, I'm losing everything, if he doesn't
return. Perhaps he was late for the train and has come back by
now. Longing for humiliation again!" she said to herself. "No,
I'll go to Dolly, and say straight out to her, I'm unhappy, I
deserve this, I'm to blame, but still I'm unhappy, help me.
These horses, this carriage--how loathsome I am to myself in this
carriage--all his; but I won't see them again."

Thinking over the words in which she would tell Dolly, and
mentally working her heart up to great bitterness, Anna went
upstairs.

"Is there anyone with her?" she asked in the hall.

"Katerina Alexandrovna Levin," answered the footman.

"Kitty! Kitty, whom Vronsky was in love with!" thought Anna,
"the girl he thinks of with love. He's sorry he didn't marry
her. But me he thinks of with hatred, and is sorry he had
anything to do with me."

The sisters were having a consultation about nursing when Anna
called. Dolly went down alone to see the visitor who had
interrupted their conversation.

"Well, so you've not gone away yet? I meant to have come to
you," she said; "I had