and Vronsky
suddenly saw in her beautiful face the very expression with which
Alexey Alexandrovitch had bowed to him. He smiled, while she
laughed gaily, with that sweet, deep laugh, which was one of her
greatest charms.

"I don't understand him in the least," said Vronsky. "If after
your avowal to him at your country house he had broken with you,
if he had called me out--but this I can't understand. How can he
put up with such a position? He feels it, that's evident."

"He?" she said sneeringly. "He's perfectly satisfied."

"What are we all miserable for, when everything might be so
happy?"

"Only not he. Don't I know him, the falsity in which he's
utterly steeped?... Could one, with any feeling, live as he is
living with me? He understands nothing, and feels nothing.
Could a man of any feeling live in the same house with his
unfaithful wife? Could he talk to her, call her 'my dear'?"

And again she could not help mimicking him: "'Anna, _ma chere_;
Anna, dear'!"

"He's not a man, not a human being--he's a doll! No one knows
him; but I know him. Oh, if I'd been in his place, I'd long ago
have killed, have torn to pieces a wife like me. I wouldn't
have said, 'Anna, ma chere'! He's not a man, he's an official
machine. He doesn't understand that I'm your wife, that he's
outside, that he's superfluous.... Don't let's talk of him!..."

"You're unfair, very unfair, dearest," said Vronsky, trying to
soothe her. "But never mind, don't let's talk of him. Tell me
what you've been doing? What is the matter? What has been wrong
with you, and what did the doctor say?"

She looked at him with mocking amusement. Evidently she had hit
on other absurd and grotesque aspects in her husband and was
awaiting the moment to give expression to them.

But he went on:

"I imagine that it's not illness, but your condition. When will
it be?"

The ironical light died away in her eyes, but a different smile,
a consciousness of something, he did not know what, and of quiet
melancholy, came over her face.

"Soon, soon. You say that our position is miserable, that we
must put an end to it. If you knew how terrible it is to me,
what I would give to be able to love you freely and boldly! I
should not torture myself and torture you with my jealousy....
And it will come soon, but not as we expect."

And at the thought of how it would come, she seemed so pitiable
to herself that tears came into her eyes, and she c