She had already been in Petersburg for two days. The thought of her son had never left her for a moment, but she still had not seen him. She felt she did not have the right to go directly to the house, where she might encounter Alexei Alexandrovich. She might be insulted and turned away. As for writing and entering into relations with her husband, it was painful even to think of it: she could be at peace only when not thinking of her husband. To find out when and where her son went for his walks and see him then, was not enough for her: she had been preparing so long for this meeting, she had so much to tell him, she wanted so much to embrace him, to kiss him. Seryozha’s old nanny might have helped her and instructed her. But the nanny no longer lived in Alexei Alexandrovich’s house. In these hesitations and in the search for the nanny, two days passed.
Learning of the close relations between Alexei Alexandrovich and Countess Lydia Ivanovna, Anna decided on the third day to write her a letter, which cost her great effort, in which she said deliberately that permission to see her son depended on her husband’s magnanimity. She knew that if her husband were shown the letter, he, pursuing his role of magnanimity, would not refuse her.
The messenger who had carried the letter brought her a most cruel and unexpected reply - that there would be no reply. She had never felt so humiliated as in that moment when, having summoned the messenger, she heard from him a detailed account of how he had waited and how he had then been told: ‘There will be no reply.’ Anna felt herself humiliated, offended, but she saw that from her own point of view Countess Lydia Ivanovna was right. Her grief was the stronger because it was solitary. She could not and did not want to share it with Vronsky. She knew that for him, though he was the chief cause of her unhappiness, the question of her meeting her son would be a most unimportant thing. She knew that he would never be able to understand all the depth of her suffering; she knew that she would hate him for his cold tone at the mention of it. She feared that more than anything in the world, and so she concealed everything from him that had to do with her son.
She spent the whole day at home, inventing means for meeting her son, and arrived at the decision to write to her husband. She was already working on the letter when Lydia Ivanovna’s letter was brought to her. The countess’s silence had humbled and subdued her, but the letter, everything she could read between its lines, annoyed her so much, its malice seemed so outrageous compared with her passionate and legitimate tenderness for her son, that she became indignant with them and stopped accusing herself.
‘This coldness is a pretence of feeling,’ she said to herself. ‘All they want is to offend me and torment the child, and I should submit to them! Not for anything! She’s worse than I am. At least I don’t lie.’ And she decided then and there that the next day, Seryozha’s birthday itself, she would go directly to her husband’s house, bribe the servants, deceive them, but at all costs see her son and destroy the ugly deceit with which they surrounded the unfortunate child.
She went to a toy store, bought lots of toys, and thought over her plan of action. She would come early in the morning, at eight o‘clock, when it was certain that Alexei Alexandrovich would not be up yet. She would have money with her, which she would give to the hall porter and the footman so that they would let her in, and, without lifting her veil, she would tell them she had come from Seryozha’s godfather to wish him a happy birthday and had been charged with putting the toys by the boy’s bed. The only thing she did not prepare was what she would say to her son. However much she thought about it, she could not think of anything.
The next day, at eight o‘clock in the morning, Anna got out of a hired carriage by herself and rang at the big entrance of her former home.
‘Go and see what she wants. It’s some lady,’ said Kapitonych, not dressed yet, in a coat and galoshes, looking out of the window at a lady in a veil who was standing just at the door.
The porter’s helper, a young fellow Anna did not know, opened the door for her. She came in and, taking a three-rouble bill from her muff, hurriedly put it into his hand.
‘Seryozha ... Sergei Alexeich,’ she said and started forward. Having examined the bill, the porter’s helper stopped her at the inside glass door.
‘Who do you want?’ he asked.
She did not hear his words and made no reply.
Noticing the unknown woman’s perplexity, Kapitonych himself came out to her, let her in the door and asked what she wanted.
‘I’ve come from Prince Skorodumov, to see Sergei Alexeich,’ she said.
‘He’s not up yet,’ the porter said, looking at her intently.
