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seen nothing but kindness and affection from her towards myself.” It
was true that as far as she could recall her impressions at Petersburg at
the Karenins’, she did not like their household itself; there was some-
thing artificial in the whole framework of their family life. “But why
should I not receive her? If only she doesn’t take it into her head to
console me!” thought Dolly. “All consolation and counsel and Chris-
tian forgiveness, all that I have thought over a thousand times, and it’s
all no use.”
All these days Dolly had been alone with her children. She did not
want to talk of her sorrow, but with that sorrow in her heart she could
not talk of outside matters. She knew that in one way or another she
would tell Anna everything, and she was alternately glad at the thought
of speaking freely, and angry at the necessity of speaking of her humili-
ation with her, his sister, and of hearing her ready-made phrases of
good advice and comfort. She had been on the lookout for her, glancing
at her watch every minute, and, as so often happens, let slip just that
minute when her visitor arrived, so that she did not hear the bell.
Catching a sound of skirts and light steps at the door, she looked
round, and her care-worn face unconsciously expressed not gladness,
but wonder. She got up and embraced her sister-in-law.
“What, here already!” she said as she kissed her.
“Dolly, how glad I am to see you!”
“I am glad, too,” said Dolly, faintly smiling, and trying by the ex-
pression of Anna’s face to find out whether she knew. “Most likely she
knows,” she thought, noticing the sympathy in Anna’s face. “Well,
come along, I’ll take you to your room,” she went on, trying to defer as
long as possible the moment of confidences.
“Is this Grisha? Heavens, how he’s grown!” said Anna; and kissing
him, never taking her eyes off Dolly, she stood still and flushed a little.
“No, please, let us stay here.”
She took off her kerchief and her hat, and catching it in a lock of her
black hair, which was a mass of curls, she tossed her head and shook
her hair down.
“You are radiant with health and happiness!” said Dolly, almost
with envy.
“I?.... Yes,” said Anna. “Merciful heavens, Tanya! You’re the same
age as my Seryozha,” she added, addressing the little girl as she ran in.
She took her in her arms and kissed her. “Delightful child, delightful!
Show me them all.”
She mentioned them, not only remembering the names, but the
years, months, characters, illnesses of all the children, and Dolly could
not but appreciate that.
“Very well, we will go to them,” she said. “It’s a pity Vassya’s
asleep.”
After seeing the children, They sat down, alone now, in the draw-
ing room, to coffee. Anna took the tray, and then pushed it away from
her.
“Dolly,” she said, “he has told me.”
Dolly looked coldly at Anna; she was waiting now for phrases of
conventional sympathy, but Anna said nothing of the sort.
“Dolly, dear,” she said, “I don’t want to speak for him to you, nor to
try to comfort you; that’s impossible. But, darling, I’m simply sorry, sorry
from my heart for you!”
Under the thick lashes of her shining eyes tears suddenly glittered.
She moved nearer to her sister-in-law and took her hand in her vigor-
ous little hand. Dolly did not shrink away, but her face did not lose its
frigid expression. She said:
“To comfort me’s impossible. Everything’s lost after what has hap-