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“The coffee is ready, and mademoiselle and Seryozha are waiting,”
said Annushka, coming back again and finding Anna in the same
position.
“Seryozha? What about Seryozha?” Anna asked, with sudden ea-
gerness, recollecting her son’s existence for the first time that morning.
“He’s been naughty, I think,” answered Annushka with a smile.
“In what way?”
“Some peaches were lying on the table in the corner room. I think
he slipped in and ate one of them on the sly.”
The recollection of her son suddenly roused Anna from the help-
less condition in which she found herself. She recalled the partly
sincere, though greatly exaggerated, role of the mother living for her
child, which she had taken up of late years, and she felt with joy that in
the plight in which she found herself she had a support, quite apart
from her relation to her husband or to Vronsky. This support was her
son. In whatever position she might be placed, she could not lose her
son. Her husband might put her to shame and turn her out, Vronsky
might grow cold to her and go on living his own life apart (she thought
of him again with bitterness and reproach); she could not leave her son.
She had an aim in life. And she must act; act to secure this relation to
her son, so that he might not be taken from her. Quickly indeed, as
quickly as possible, she must take action before he was taken from her.
She must take her son and go away. Here was the one thing she had to
do now. She needed consolation. She must be calm, and get out of this
insufferable position. The thought of immediate action binding her to
her son, of going away somewhere with him, gave her this consolation.
She dressed quickly, went downstairs, and with resolute steps
walked into the drawing room, where she found, as usual, waiting for
her, the coffee, Seryozha, and his governess. Seryozha, all in white,
with his back and head bent, was standing at a table under a looking-
glass, and with an expression of intense concentration which she knew
well, and in which he resembled his father, he was doing something to
the flowers he carried.
The governess had a particularly severe expression. Seryozha
screamed shrilly, as he often did, “Ah, mamma!” and stopped, hesitat-
ing whether to go to greet his mother and put down the flowers, or to
finish making the wreath and go with the flowers.
The governess, after saying good-morning, began a long and de-
tailed account of Seryozha’s naughtiness, but Anna did not hear her;
she was considering whether she would take her with her or not. “No,
I won’t take her,” she decided. “I’ll go alone with my child.”
“Yes, it’s very wrong,” said Anna, and taking her son by the shoul-
der she looked at him, not severely, but with a timid glance that bewil-
dered and delighted the boy, and she kissed him. “Leave him to me,”
she said to the astonished governess, and not letting go of her son, she
sat down at the table, where coffee was set ready for her.
“Mamma! I...I...didn’t...” he said, trying to make out from her ex-
pression what was in store for him in regard to the peaches.
“Seryozha,” she said, as soon as the governess had left the room,
“that was wrong, but you’ll never do it again, will you?... You love me?”
She felt that the tears were coming into her eyes. “Can I help
loving him?” she said to herself, looking deeply into his scared and at
the same time delighted eyes. “And can he ever join his father in
punishing me? Is it possible he will not feel for me?” Tears were
already flowing down her face, and to hide them she got up abruptly
and almost ran out on to the terrace.
After the thunder showers of the last few days, cold, bright weather
had set in. The air was cold in the bright sun that filtered through the