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 when I was in despair, when it seemed I should never succeed, it has come! She loves me! She confesses it."

"Then do this for me, and never speak to me in this way again; let us be good friends," said her words: her eyes told a totally different story.

"We can never be mere friends; you yourself know it. Shall we be the most miserable, or the happiest, of human beings? It is for you to decide."

She began to speak, but he interrupted her.

"You see I ask only one thing, the right of hoping and suffering, as I do now; if it is impossible, order me to disappear, and I will disappear; you shall not see me if my presence is painful to you."

"I do not wish to drive you away."

"Then change nothing; let things go as they are," said he, with trembling voice. "Here is your husband!"

Indeed, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch at that instant was entering the drawing-room, with his calm face and awkward gait.

Glancing at his wife and Vronsky, he went first to the hostess, and then he sat down with a cup of tea, and in his slow and well-modulated voice, in his habitual tone of persiflage, which seemed always to deride some one or something, he said, as he glanced around at the assembly:—

"Your Rambouillet is complete,—the Graces and the Muses!"

But the Princess Betsy could not endure this "sneering" tone of his, as she called it,—and, like a clever hostess, quickly brought him round to a serious discussion of the forced conscription. Alekseï Aleksandrovitch immediately entered into it, and began gravely to defend the new ukase against Betsy's attacks.

Vronsky and Anna still sat near their little table.

"That is getting rather pronounced," said a lady, in a whisper, indicating with her eyes Karenin, Anna, and Vronsky.

"What did I tell you?" said Anna's friend.

Not only these ladies, but nearly all who were in the drawing-room, even the Princess Miagkaya and Betsy