‘Here it is again! Again I understand everything,’ Anna said to herself as soon as the carriage set off, rocking and clattering over the small cobbles, and again the impressions began changing one after another.
‘Yes, what was that last thing I thought about so nicely?’ she tried to remember. ‘Twitkin, Coiffeur? No, not that. Yes, it was what Yashvin said: the struggle for existence and hatred - the only thing that connects people. No, you’re going in vain,’ she mentally addressed a company in a coach-and-four who were evidently going out of town for some merriment. ‘And the dog you’re taking with you won’t help you. You won’t get away from yourselves.’ Glancing in the direction in which Pyotr had just turned, she saw a half-dead-drunk factory worker with a lolling head being taken somewhere by a policeman. ‘Sooner that one,’ she thought. ‘Count Vronsky and I didn’t find that pleasure either, though we expected so much from it.’ And now for the first time Anna turned the bright light in which she saw everything upon her relations with him, which she had avoided thinking about before. ‘What was he looking for in me? Not love so much as the satisfaction of his vanity.’ She remembered his words, the expression on his face, like an obedient pointer, in the early days of their liaison. And now everything confirmed it. ‘Yes, there was the triumph of successful vanity in him. Of course, there was love, too, but for the most part it was the pride of success. He boasted of me. Now it’s past. Nothing to be proud of. Not proud but ashamed. He took all he could from me, and I’m of no use to him any more. I’m a burden to him, and he tries not to be dishonourable towards me. He let it slip yesterday - he wants the divorce and marriage in order to burn his boats. He loves me - but how?
This was not a supposition. She saw it clearly in that piercing light which now revealed to her the meaning of life and of people’s relations.
