Anna Karenina - Part 7

"He has gone! It is over!" Anna said to herself, standing at the

window; and in answer to this statement the impression of the

darkness when the candle had flickered out, and of her fearful

dream mingling into one, filled her heart with cold terror.

"No, that cannot be!" she cried, and crossing the room she rang

the bell. She was so afraid now of being alone, that without

waiting for the servant to come in, she went out to meet him.

"Inquire where the count has gone," she said. The servant

answered that the count had gone to the stable.

"His honor left word that if you cared to drive out, the carriage

would be back immediately."

"Very good. Wait a minute. I'll write a note at once. Send

Mihail with the note to the stables. Make haste."

She sat down and wrote: "I was wrong. Come back home; I must explain. For God's sake

come! I'm afraid."

She sealed it up and gave it to the servant.

She was afraid of being left alone now; she followed the servant

out of the room, and went to the nursery.

"Why, this isn't it, this isn't he! Where are his blue eyes, his

sweet, shy smile?" was her first thought when she saw her chubby,

rosy little girl with her black, curly hair instead of Seryozha,

whom in the tangle of her ideas she had expected to see in the

nursery. The little girl sitting at the table was obstinately

and violently battering on it with a cork, and staring aimlessly

at her mother with her pitch-black eyes. Answering the English

nurse that she was quite well, and that she was going to the

country tomorrow, Anna sat down by the little girl and began

spinning the cork to show her. But the child's loud, ringing

laugh, and the motion of her eyebrows, recalled Vronsky so

vividly that she got up hurriedly, restraining her sobs, and went

away. "Can it be all over? No, it cannot be!" she thought. "He

will come back. But how can he explain that smile, that

excitement after he had been talking to her? But even if he

doesn't explain, I will believe. If I don't believe, there's

only one thing left for me, and I can't."

She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes had passed. "By now he

has received the note and is coming back. Not long, ten minutes

more.... But what if he doesn't come? No, that cannot be. He

mustn't see me with tear-stained eyes. I'll go and wash. Yes,

yes; did I do my hair or not?" she asked herself. And she could

not remember. She felt her head with her hand. "Yes, my hair

has been done, but when I did it I can't in the least remember."

She could not believe the evidence of her hand, and went up to

the pier glass to see whether she really had done her hair. She

certainly had, but she could not think when she had done it.

"Who's that?" she thought, looking in the looking glass at the

swollen face with strangely glittering eyes, that looked in a

scared way at her. "Why, it's I!" she suddenly understood, and

looking round, she seemed all at once to feel his kisses on her,

and twitched her shoulders, shuddering. Then she lifted her hand

to her lips and kissed it.