Thoughts and memories came crowding into Darya Alexandrovna’s head with extraordinary quickness, as happens in moments of excitement. ‘I didn’t make myself attractive to Stiva,’ she thought. ‘He left me for other women, and the first one he betrayed me for did not keep him by being always beautiful and gay. He dropped her and took another. And is this how Anna is going to attract and keep Count Vronsky? If he’s looking for that, he’ll find clothes and manners that are still more gay and attractive. And however white, however beautiful her bare arms, however attractive her full bosom, her flushed face against that dark hair, he’ll find still better ones, as my disgusting, pathetic and dear husband seeks and finds them.’
Dolly made no answer and only sighed. Anna noticed her sigh, which showed disagreement, and went on. She had more arguments in store, such strong ones that it was impossible to answer them.
‘You say it’s not good? But you must consider,’ she went on. ‘You forget my situation. How can I want children? I’m not talking about the suffering, I’m not afraid of that. But think, who will my children be? Unfortunate children, who will bear another man’s name. By their very birth they’ll be placed in the necessity of being ashamed of their mother, their father, their birth.’
‘That’s just why you must get divorced.’
But Anna did not hear her. She wanted to voice the same arguments with which she had so often persuaded herself.
‘Why have I been given reason, if I don’t use it so as not to bring unfortunate children into the world?’
She looked at Dolly, but went on without waiting for an answer:
‘I would always feel guilty before those unfortunate children,’ she said. ‘If they don’t exist, at least they won’t be unfortunate, and if they’re unfortunate, I alone am to blame.’
These were the same arguments Darya Alexandrovna had produced for herself, but now she listened to them and could not understand them. ‘How can she be guilty before beings who don’t exist?’ she wondered. And suddenly a thought came to her: could it be better in any possible case for her favourite, Grisha, if he had never existed? And it seemed so wild to her, so strange, that she shook her head to scatter this whirling confusion of mad thoughts.
‘No, I don’t know, it’s not good,’ she merely said, with a squeamish look on her face.
‘Yes, but don’t forget what you are and what I am ... And besides,’ Anna added, as if, despite the wealth of her arguments and the poverty of Dolly‘s, she still admitted that it was not good, ‘don’t forget the main thing, that I’m not in the same situation now as you are. For you the question is whether you do not want to have any more children, and for me it’s whether I want to have them. And that is a big difference. You see, I can’t want it in my situation.’
Darya Alexandrovna did not object. She suddenly felt she had become so distant from Anna that there were questions between them which they would never agree on and of which it was better not to speak.
XXIV
‘Then you need all the more to settle your situation, if possible,’ said Dolly.
‘Yes, if possible,’ Anna said suddenly, in a completely different, soft and sad voice.
‘Is divorce impossible? I was told your husband has agreed.’
‘Dolly! I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘Well, then we won’t,’ Darya Alexandrovna hastened to say, noticing the look of suffering on Anna’s face. ‘I only see that you look at things too darkly.’
‘Me? Not a bit. I’m very cheerful and content. You’ve noticed, je fais
‘Yes, to tell the truth, I didn’t like Veslovsky’s tone,’ Darya Alexandrovna said, wishing to change the subject.
‘Ah, not a bit! It tickles Alexei, that’s all; but he’s a boy and he’s entirely in my hands; you understand, I control him as I please. He’s the same as your Grisha ... Dolly!’ she suddenly changed her tone, ‘you say I look at things too darkly. You cannot understand. It’s too terrible. I try not to look at all.’
‘But I think you must. You must do everything possible.’
‘But what is possible? Nothing. You say marry Alexei and that I don’t think about it. I don’t think about it!!’ she repeated, and colour came to her face. She rose, drew herself up, sighed deeply, and began pacing the room with her light step, pausing every now and then. ‘I don’t think? There isn’t a day or an hour that I don’t think of it and don’t reproach myself for that thinking ... because the thought of it could drive me mad. Drive me mad,’ she repeated. ‘When I think of it, I can’t fall asleep without morphine. But, very well. Let’s talk calmly. Divorce, I’m told. First of all,
Darya Alexandrovna, drawn up straight on her chair, with a suffering and sympathetic face, kept turning her head as she watched Anna pacing.
‘You must try,’ she said softly.
