ears, with sobs and heaving breast like a child
crying. She was weeping that her dream of her position being
made clear and definite had been annihilated forever. She knew
beforehand that everything would go on in the old way, and far
worse, indeed, than in the old way. She felt that the position
in the world that she enjoyed, and that had seemed to her of so
little consequence in the morning, that this position was
precious to her, that she would not have the strength to exchange
it for the shameful position of a woman who has abandoned husband
and child to join her lover; that however much she might
struggle, she could not be stronger than herself. She would
never know freedom in love, but would remain forever a guilty
wife, with the menace of detection hanging over her at every
instant; deceiving her husband for the sake of a shameful
connection with a man living apart and away from her, whose life
she could never share. She knew that this was how it would be,
and at the same time it was so awful that she could not even
conceive what it would end in. And she cried without restraint,
as children cry when they are punished.

The sound of the footman's steps forced her to rouse herself,
and, hiding her face from him, she pretended to be writing.

"The courier asks if there's an answer," the footman announced.

"An answer? Yes," said Anna. "Let him wait. I'll ring."

"What can I write?" she thought. "What can I decide upon
alone? What do I know? What do I want? What is there I care
for?" Again she felt that her soul was beginning to be split in
two. She was terrified again at this feeling, and clutched at
the first pretext for doing something which might divert her
thoughts from herself. "I ought to see Alexey" (so she called
Vronsky in her thoughts); "no one but he can tell me what I ought
to do. I'll go to Betsy's, perhaps I shall see him there," she
said to herself, completely forgetting that when she had told him
the day before that she was not going to Princess Tverskaya's, he
had said that in that case he should not go either. She went up
to the table, wrote to her husband, "I have received your letter.
--A."; and, ringing the bell, gave it to the footman.

"We are not going," she said to Annushka, as she came in.

"Not going at all?"

"No; don't unpack till tomorrow, and let the carriage wait. I'm
going to the princess's."

"Which dress am I to get ready?"

Chapter 17

The c