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326 "Before I go away forever, I will tell him all. I never hated any one as I hate this man!"

And when she caught sight of Vronsky's hat hanging on the peg, she shivered with aversion. She did not reflect that the despatch was in answer to her telegram, and that he could not as yet have received her note. She imagined him now chatting gayly with his mother and the Princess Sorokin, without a thought of her suffering.

"Yes, I must go as quickly as possible," she said, not knowing at all whither she should go.

She felt that she must fly from the thoughts that oppressed her in this terrible house. The servants, the walls, the furniture, everything about it, filled her with disgust and pain, and crushed her with a terrible weight.

"Yes, I must go to the railroad station, and if not there, then somewhere else, to punish him."

She looked at the time-table in the newspaper. The evening train went at two minutes past eight.

"Yes, I shall have plenty of time."

She ordered the two other horses to be harnessed, and she had transferred from her trunk to her traveling-bag things enough to last for several days. She knew that she should never come back again. She revolved a thousand plans in her head, and determined that when she had done what she had in mind to do, either at the countess's country seat, or at the station, she would go to the first city on the Nizhni Novgorod Railway and stay there.

Dinner was on the table. She went to it, smelt the bread and cheese, and persuading herself that the odor of the victuals was repugnant to her, she ordered the carriage again, and went out. The house was already casting a shadow across the wide street; but the sky was clear, and it was warm in the sun. Annushka, who brought her things, and Piotr, who carried them to the carriage, and the coachman, who was evidently angry, all were disagreeable to her, and vexed her with their words and motions.