Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/1002

320 And, leaving this question unanswered, she began to read the sign-boards mechanically.

"Kontor i sklad. Zubnoï Vratch —Yes, I will tell Dolly all about it. She does not love Vronsky. It will be hard, shameful, .... but I will confess everything. She loves me. I will follow her advice. I will not allow him to treat me like a child. Philoppof—Kalatchi; they say they send those loaves as far as Petersburg. The water at Moscow is so good; ah! the wells of Muitishchensky!"

And she remembered how long, long ago, when she was seventeen, she had gone with her aunt to the monastery of Troïtsa.

"They traveled with horses in those days. Was it really I, with the red hands? How many things which seemed then beautiful and unattainable are worthless to me now! What I was then, is passed forever beyond recall! And ages could not bring me back. Would I have believed then that I could have fallen into such debasement? .... How proud and self-satisfied he will be when he reads my note! But I will tell him. .... How disagreeable this paint smells! Why are they always painting and building? Modui i uborui. Fashionable Dressmaker," she read.

A man bowed to her; it was Annushka's husband.

"Our parasites, as Vronsky says. Ours? Why ours? Ah, if one could tear out the past by the root! But that's impossible; one can only avoid thinking about it. And I do that."

And yet, here she recalled her past with Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, and how she had driven him out of her memory.

"Dolly will think that I am leaving the second husband, and that I am, therefore, really bad. Do I want to be good? I cannot." .... And she felt the tears com-