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 powerless to prevent it. Whenever he tried to bring about an explanation, she raised up against him an impenetrable wall of humorous perplexity.

Outwardly, everything was the same, but their relations had completely changed. Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, a remarkably strong man in matters requiring statesmanship, here found himself powerless. Like an ox, submissively lowering its head, he waited the blow of the ax which he felt was lifted against him. Whenever he began to think about it, he felt that once more he must try by gentleness, tenderness, reason, to save Anna, and bring her back to him. Every day he made up his mind to speak; but as soon as he made the attempt, that evil spirit of falsehood which possessed her seemed to lay hold of him also, and he spoke not at all in the tone in which he meant to speak. Involuntarily, what he said was spoken in his tone of raillery, which seemed to cast ridicule on those who would speak as he did. And this tone was not at all suitable for the expression of the thoughts that he wished to express.

CHAPTER XI

had been for nearly a whole year the sole desire of Vronsky's life, changing all his former desires—what Anna had looked upon as an impossible, a terrible, and, therefore, the more a fascinating, dream of bliss, was at last realized. Pale, with quivering lower jaw, he stood over her, begging her to be calm, himself not knowing how or why.

"Anna! Anna!" he said, with trembling voice. "Anna! for God's sake!" ....

But the more intensely he spoke the lower she hung her once proud, joyous, but now humiliated head, and she crouched all down, and dropped from the divan, where she had been sitting, to the floor at his feet. She would have fallen on the carpet had he not held her.

"My God! forgive me!" she sobbed, pressing his