who seemed whirling by as they ran beside the train or
stood on the platform. The train, jerking at regular intervals
at the junctions of the rails, rolled by the platform, past a
stone wall, a signal-box, past other trains; the wheels, moving
more smoothly and evenly, resounded with a slight clang on the
rails. The window was lighted up by the bright evening sun, and
a slight breeze fluttered the curtain. Anna forgot her fellow
passengers, and to the light swaying of the train she fell to
thinking again, as she breathed the fresh air.

"Yes, what did I stop at? That I couldn't conceive a position in
which life would not be a misery, that we are all created to be
miserable, and that we all know it, and all invent means of
deceiving each other. And when one sees the truth, what is one
to do?"

"That's what reason is given man for, to escape from what worries
him," said the lady in French, lisping affectedly, and obviously
pleased with her phrase.

The words seemed an answer to Anna's thoughts.

"To escape from what worries him," repeated Anna. And glancing
at the red-cheeked husband and the thin wife, she saw that the
sickly wife considered herself misunderstood, and the husband
deceived her and encouraged her in that idea of herself. Anna
seemed to see all their history and all the crannies of their
souls, as it were turning a light upon them. But there was
nothing interesting in them, and she pursued her thought.

"Yes, I'm very much worried, and that's what reason was given me
for, to escape; so then one must escape: why not put out the
light when there's nothing more to look at, when it's sickening
to look at it all? But how? Why did the conductor run along the
footboard, why are they shrieking, those young men in that train?
why are they talking, why are they laughing? It's all falsehood,
all lying, all humbug, all cruelty!..."

When the train came into the station, Anna got out into the crowd
of passengers, and moving apart from them as if they were lepers,
she stood on the platform, trying to think what she had come here
for, and what she meant to do. Everything that had seemed to her
possible before was now so difficult to consider, especially in
this noisy crowd of hideous people who would not leave her alone.
One moment porters ran up to her proffering their services, then
young men, clacking their heels on the planks of the platform and
talking loudly, stared at her; people meeting her do