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deductions from which are so immense that all that one feels for the
first instant is that it is impossible to take it all in, and that one will have
to reflect a great, great deal upon it.
This discovery, suddenly throwing light on all those families of one
or two children, which had hitherto been so incomprehensible to her,
aroused so many ideas, reflections, and contradictory emotions, that
she had nothing to say, and simply gazed with wide-open eyes of
wonder at Anna. This was the very thing she had been dreaming of,
but now learning that it was possible, she was horrified. She felt that it
was too simple a solution of too complicated a problem.
“N’est-ce pas immoral?” was all she said, after a brief pause.
“Why so? Think, I have a choice between two alternatives: either
to be with child, that is an invalid, or to be the friend and companion of
my husband—practically my husband,” Anna said in a tone intention-
ally superficial and frivolous.
“Yes, yes,” said Darya Alexandrovna, hearing the very arguments
she had used to herself, and not finding the same force in them as
before.
“For you, for other people,” said Anna, as though divining her
thoughts, “there may be reason to hesitate; but for me.... You must
consider, I am not his wife; he loves me as long as he loves me. And
how am I to keep his love? Not like this!”
She moved her white hands in a curve before her waist with ex-
traordinary rapidity, as happens during moments of excitement; ideas
and memories rushed into Darya Alexandrovna’s head. “I,” she thought,
“did not keep my attraction for Stiva; he left me for others, and the first
woman for whom he betrayed me did not keep him by being always
pretty and lively. He deserted her and took another. And can Anna
attract and keep Count Vronsky in that way? If that is what he looks
for, he will find dresses and manners still more attractive and charming.
And however white and beautiful her bare arms are, however beauti-
ful her full figure and her eager face under her black curls, he will find
something better still, just as my disgusting, pitiful, and charming hus-
band does.”
Dolly made no answer, she merely sighed. Anna noticed this sigh,
indicating dissent, and she went on. In her armory she had other
arguments so strong that no answer could be made to them.
“Do you say that it’s not right? But you must consider,” she went
on; “you forget my position. How can I desire children? I’m not speak-
ing of the suffering, I’m not afraid of that. Think only, what are my
children to be? Ill-fated children, who will have to bear a stranger’s
name. For the very fact of their birth they will be forced to be ashamed
of their mother, their father, their birth.”
“But that is just why a divorce is necessary.” But Anna did not
hear her. She longed to give utterance to all the arguments with which
she had so many times convinced herself.
“What is reason given me for, if I am not to use it to avoid bringing
unhappy beings into the world!” She looked at Dolly, but without
waiting for a reply she went on:
“I should always feel I had wronged these unhappy children,” she
said. “If they are not, at any rate they are not unhappy; while if they
are unhappy, I alone should be to blame for it.”
These were the very arguments Darya Alexandrovna had used in
her own reflections; but she heard them without understanding them.
“How can one wrong creatures that don’t exist?” she thought. And all
at once the idea struck her: could it possibly, under any circumstances,
have been better for her favorite Grisha if he had never existed? And
this seemed to her so wild, so strange, that she shook her head to drive