ew that the support of religion was possible only upon
condition of renouncing what made up for her the whole meaning of
life. She was not simply miserable, she began to feel alarm at
the new spiritual condition, never experienced before, in which
she found herself. She felt as though everything were beginning
to be double in her soul, just as objects sometimes appear double
to over-tired eyes. She hardly knew at times what it was she
feared, and what she hoped for. Whether she feared or desired
what had happened, or what was going to happen, and exactly what
she longed for, she could not have said.

"Ah, what am I doing!" she said to herself, feeling a sudden
thrill of pain in both sides of her head. When she came to
herself, she saw that she was holding her hair in both hands,
each side of her temples, and pulling it. She jumped up, and
began walking about.

"The coffee is ready, and mademoiselle and Seryozha are waiting,"
said Annushka, coming back again and finding Anna in the same
position.

"Seryozha? What about Seryozha?" Anna asked, with sudden
eagerness, recollecting her son's existence for the first time
that morning.

"He's been naughty, I think," answered Annushka with a smile.

"In what way?"

"Some peaches were lying on the table in the corner room. I
think he slipped in and ate one of them on the sly."

The recollection of her son suddenly roused Anna from the
helpless condition in which she found herself. She recalled the
partly sincere, though greatly exaggerated, role of the mother
living for her child, which she had taken up of late years, and
she felt with joy that in the plight in which she found herself
she had a support, quite apart from her relation to her husband
or to Vronsky. This support was her son. In whatever position
she might be placed, she could not lose her son. Her husband
might put her to shame and turn her out, Vronsky might grow cold
to her and go on living his own life apart (she thought of him
again with bitterness and reproach); she could not leave her son.
She had an aim in life. And she must act; act to secure this
relation to her son, so that he might not be taken from her.
Quickly indeed, as quickly as possible, she must take action
before he was taken from her. She must take her son and go away.
Here was the one thing she had to do now. She needed
consolation. She must be calm, and get out of this insufferable
position. The thought of immediate a