"Come, it's all over, and thank God!" was the first thought that

came to Anna Arkadyevna, when she had said good-bye for the last

time to her brother, who had stood blocking up the entrance to

the carriage till the third bell rang. She sat down on her

lounge beside Annushka, and looked about her in the twilight of

the sleeping-carriage. "Thank God! tomorrow I shall see Seryozha

and Alexey Alexandrovitch, and my life will go on in the old way,

all nice and as usual."

Still in the same anxious frame of mind, as she had been all that

day, Anna took pleasure in arranging herself for the journey with

great care. With her little deft hands she opened and shut her

little red bag, took out a cushion, laid it on her knees, and

carefully wrapping up her feet, settled herself comfortably. An

invalid lady had already lain down to sleep. Two other ladies

began talking to Anna, and a stout elderly lady tucked up her

feet, and made observations about the heating of the train. Anna

answered a few words, but not foreseeing any entertainment from

the conversation, she asked Annushka to get a lamp, hooked it

onto the arm of her seat, and took from her bag a paper knife and

an English novel. At first her reading made no progress. The

fuss and bustle were disturbing; then when the train had started,

she could not help listening to the noises; then the snow beating

on the left window and sticking to the pane, and the sight of the

muffled guard passing by, covered with snow on one side, and the

conversations about the terrible snowstorm raging outside,

distracted her attention. Farther on, it was continually the

same again and again: the same shaking and rattling, the same

snow on the window, the same rapid transitions from steaming

heat to cold, and back again to heat, the same passing glimpses

of the same figures in the twilight, and the same voices, and

Anna began to read and to understand what she read. Annushka was

already dozing, the red bag on her lap, clutched by her broad

hands, in gloves, of which one was torn. Anna Arkadyevna read

and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is,

to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had too

great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of

the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with

noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a

member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering

the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the

hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised

everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same.

But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the

smooth paper knife in her little hands, she forced herself to

read.




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