she could not help listening to the noises; then the snow beating
on the left window and sticking to the pane, and the sight of the
muffled guard passing by, covered with snow on one side, and the
conversations about the terrible snowstorm raging outside,
distracted her attention. Farther on, it was continually the
same again and again: the same shaking and rattling, the same
snow on the window, the same rapid transitions from steaming
heat to cold, and back again to heat, the same passing glimpses
of the same figures in the twilight, and the same voices, and
Anna began to read and to understand what she read. Annushka was
already dozing, the red bag on her lap, clutched by her broad
hands, in gloves, of which one was torn. Anna Arkadyevna read
and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is,
to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had too
great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of
the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with
noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a
member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering
the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the
hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised
everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same.
But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the
smooth paper knife in her little hands, she forced herself to
read.

The hero of the novel was already almost reaching his English
happiness, a baronetcy and an estate, and Anna was feeling a
desire to go with him to the estate, when she suddenly felt that
_he_ ought to feel ashamed, and that she was ashamed of the same
thing. But what had he to be ashamed of? "What have I to be
ashamed of?" she asked herself in injured surprise. She laid
down the book and sank against the back of the chair, tightly
gripping the paper cutter in both hands. There was nothing. She
went over all her Moscow recollections. All were good, pleasant.
She remembered the ball, remembered Vronsky and his face of
slavish adoration, remembered all her conduct with him: there
was nothing shameful. And for all that, at the same point in her
memories, the feeling of shame was intensified, as though some
inner voice, just at the point when she thought of Vronsky, were
saying to her, "Warm, very warm, hot." "Well, what is it?" she
said to herself resolutely, shifting her seat in the lou