Anna Karenina - Part 5

As intensely as Anna had longed to see her son, and long as she

had been thinking of it and preparing herself for it, she had

not in the least expected that seeing him would affect her so

deeply. On getting back to her lonely rooms in the hotel she

could not for a long while understand why she was there. "Yes,

it's all over, and I am again alone," she said to herself, and

without taking off her hat she sat down in a low chair by the

hearth. Fixing her eyes on a bronze clock standing on a table

between the windows, she tried to think.

The French maid brought from abroad came in to suggest she should

dress. She gazed at her wonderingly and said, "Presently." A

footman offered her coffee. "Later on," she said.

The Italian nurse, after having taken the baby out in her best,

came in with her, and brought her to Anna. The plump, well-fed

little baby, on seeing her mother, as she always did, held out

her fat little hands, and with a smile on her toothless mouth,

began, like a fish with a float, bobbing her fingers up and down

the starched folds of her embroidered skirt, making them rustle.

It was impossible not to smile, not to kiss the baby, impossible

not to hold out a finger for her to clutch, crowing and prancing

all over; impossible not to offer her a lip which she sucked into

her little mouth by way of a kiss. And all this Anna did, and

took her in her arms and made her dance, and kissed her fresh

little cheek and bare little elbows; but at the sight of this

child it was plainer than ever to her that the feeling she had

for her could not be called love in comparison with what she felt

for Seryozha. Everything in this baby was charming, but for some

reason all this did not go deep to her heart. On her first

child, though the child of an unloved father, had been

concentrated all the love that had never found satisfaction. Her

baby girl had been born in the most painful circumstances and had

not had a hundredth part of the care and thought which had been

concentrated on her first child. Besides, in the little girl

everything was still in the future, while Seryozha was by now

almost a personality, and a personality dearly loved. In him

there was a conflict of thought and feeling; he understood her,

he loved her, he judged her, she thought, recalling his words and

his eyes. And she was forever--not physically only but

spiritually--divided from him, and it was impossible to set this

right.