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back to them.
When, after evening tea and a row by night in the boat, Darya
Alexandrovna went alone to her room, took off her dress, and began
arranging her thin hair for the night, she had a great sense of relief.
It was positively disagreeable to her to think that Anna was com-
ing to see her immediately. She longed to be alone with her own
thoughts. Chapter 23.
Dolly was wanting to go to bed when Anna came in to see her,
attired for the night. In the course of the day Anna had several times
begun to speak of matters near her heart, and every time after a few
words she had stopped: “Afterwards, by ourselves, we’ll talk about
everything. I’ve got so much I want to tell you,” she said.
Now they were by themselves, and Anna did not know what to
talk about. She sat in the window looking at Dolly, and going over in
her own mind all the stores of intimate talk which had seemed so
inexhaustible beforehand, and she found nothing. At that moment it
seemed to her that everything had been said already.
“Well, what of Kitty?” she said with a heavy sigh, looking peni-
tently at Dolly. “Tell me the truth, Dolly: isn’t she angry with me?”
“Angry? Oh, no!” said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling.
“But she hates me, despises me?”
“Oh, no! But you know that sort of thing isn’t forgiven.”
“Yes, yes,” said Anna, turning away and looking out of the open
window. “But I was not to blame. And who is to blame? What’s the
meaning of being to blame? Could it have been otherwise? What do
you think? Could it possibly have happened that you didn’t become
the wife of Stiva?”
“Really, I don’t know. But this is what I want you to tell me...”