tting of the terrace. "Can it be that they won't forgive me,
won't understand how it all couldn't be helped?" she said to
herself.

Standing still, and looking at the tops of the aspen trees waving
in the wind, with their freshly washed, brightly shining leaves
in the cold sunshine, she knew that they would not forgive her,
that everyone and everything would be merciless to her now as
was that sky, that green. And again she felt that everything was
split in two in her soul. "I mustn't, mustn't think," she said
to herself. "I must get ready. To go where? When? Whom to
take with me? Yes, to Moscow by the evening train. Annushka and
Seryozha, and only the most necessary things. But first I must
write to them both." She went quickly indoors into her boudoir,
sat down at the table, and wrote to her husband:--"After what
has happened, I cannot remain any longer in your house. I am
going away, and taking my son with me. I don't know the law, and
so I don't know with which of the parents the son should remain;
but I take him with me because I cannot live without him. Be
generous, leave him to me."

Up to this point she wrote rapidly and naturally, but the appeal
to his generosity, a quality she did not recognize in him, and
the necessity of winding up the letter with something touching,
pulled her up. "Of my fault and my remorse I cannot speak,
because..."

She stopped again, finding no connection in her ideas. "No," she
said to herself, "there's no need of anything," and tearing up
the letter, she wrote it again, leaving out the allusion to
generosity, and sealed it up.

Another letter had to be written to Vronsky. "I have told my
husband," she wrote, and she sat a long while unable to write
more. It was so coarse, so unfeminine. "And what more am I to
write to him?" she said to herself. Again a flush of shame spread
over her face; she recalled his composure, and a feeling of anger
against him impelled her to tear the sheet with the phrase she
had written into tiny bits. "No need of anything," she said to
herself, and closing her blotting-case she went upstairs, told
the governess and the servants that she was going that day to
Moscow, and at once set to work to pack up her things.

Chapter 16

All the rooms of the summer villa were full of porters,
gardeners, and footmen going to and fro carrying out things.
Cupboards and chests were open; twice they had sent to the shop
for cord; pieces o