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 themselves, and to the official center. She knew how this one agreed with that and on what grounds, and how another disagreed with still another, and wherefore. But this administrative clique, to which her husband belonged, could never interest her, in spite of the Countess Lidya Ivanovna's suggestions, and she avoided it.

The second circle in which Anna moved was that which had helped Alekseï Aleksandrovitch in his career. The center of this circle was the Countess Lidya Ivanovna; it was composed of aged, ugly, charitable, and devout women, and intelligent, learned, and ambitious men. One of the clever men who belonged to this circle had called it the "conscience of Petersburg society." Karenin was very much devoted to this circle; and Anna, who had the faculty of getting along with all people, had, during the early days of her life in Petersburg, made friends in its number. After her return from Moscow, this set of people seemed to her insupportable; it seemed as if she herself, as well as all the rest of them, were hypocritical, and she felt depressed and ill at ease in this society. She saw the Countess Lidya as infrequently as she possibly could.

Finally, the third circle in which Anna had connections was Society, properly speaking, the fashionable society of balls, dinner-parties, brilliant toilets—the society which with one hand lays fast hold of the court lest it descend to the level of the demi-monde, which the members of this circle affect to despise, and yet whose tastes are not only similar, but the same. The bond that united her to this society was the Princess Betsy Tverskaya, the wife of one of her cousins, who enjoyed an income of a hundred and twenty thousand rubles, and who had taken a great fancy to Anna as soon as she came to Petersburg, flattered her, introduced her among her friends, and made ridicule of the Countess Lidya's friends.

"When I am old and ugly, I will do the same," said Betsy; "but a young and pretty woman like yourself has as yet no place in such an asylum."

Anna at first had avoided as far as possible the society