Dolly came out of her room to the tea of the grown-up people.

Stepan Arkadyevitch did not come out. He must have left his

wife's room by the other door.

"I am afraid you'll be cold upstairs," observed Dolly, addressing

Anna; "I want to move you downstairs, and we shall be nearer."

"Oh, please, don't trouble about me," answered Anna, looking

intently into Dolly's face, trying to make out whether there had

been a reconciliation or not.

"It will be lighter for you here," answered her sister-in-law.

"I assure you that I sleep everywhere, and always like a marmot."

"What's the question?" inquired Stepan Arkadyevitch, coming out

of his room and addressing his wife.

From his tone both Kitty and Anna knew that a reconciliation had

taken place.

"I want to move Anna downstairs, but we must hang up blinds. No

one knows how to do it; I must see to it myself," answered Dolly

addressing him.

"God knows whether they are fully reconciled," thought Anna,

hearing her tone, cold and composed.

"Oh, nonsense, Dolly, always making difficulties," answered her

husband. "Come, I'll do it all, if you like..."

"Yes, they must be reconciled," thought Anna.

"I know how you do everything," answered Dolly. "You tell Matvey

to do what can't be done, and go away yourself, leaving him to

make a muddle of everything," and her habitual, mocking smile

curved the corners of Dolly's lips as she spoke.

"Full, full reconciliation, full," thought Anna; "thank God!" and

rejoicing that she was the cause of it, she went up to Dolly and

kissed her.

"Not at all. Why do you always look down on me and Matvey?" said

Stepan Arkadyevitch, smiling hardly perceptibly, and addressing

his wife.

The whole evening Dolly was, as always, a little mocking in her

tone to her husband, while Stepan Arkadyevitch was happy and

cheerful, but not so as to seem as though, having been forgiven,

he had forgotten his offense.

At half-past nine o'clock a particularly joyful and pleasant

family conversation over the tea-table at the Oblonskys' was

broken up by an apparently simple incident. But this simple

incident for some reason struck everyone as strange. Talking

about common acquaintances in Petersburg, Anna got up quickly.

"She is in my album," she said; "and, by the way, I'll show you

my Seryozha," she added, with a mother's smile of pride.

Towards ten o'clock, when she usually said good-night to her son,

and often before going to a ball put him to bed herself, she felt

depressed at being so far from him; and whatever she was talking

about, she kept coming back in thought to her curly-headed

Seryozha. She longed to look at his photograph and talk of him.

Seizing the first pretext, she got up, and with her light,

resolute step went for her album. The stairs up to her room came

out on the landing of the great warm main staircase.




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