Page:Anna Karenina.djvu/399

 "Oh! what am I doing?" she cried, suddenly feeling a pain in both temples; and she discovered that she had taken her hair in her two hands, and was pulling it. She got up, and began to walk the floor.

"The coffee is served, and Mamzel and Serozha are waiting," said Annushka, coming in again, and finding her mistress in the same condition as before.

"Serozha? what is Serozha doing," suddenly asked Anna, remembering, for the first time that morning, the existence of her son,

"He has been naughty, I think," said Annushka, with a smile.

"How naughty?"

"You had some peaches in the corner cupboard; he took one, and ate it on the sly, it seems."

The thought of her son suddenly called Anna from the impassive state in which she had been sunk. She remembered the partly sincere, though somewhat exaggerated, rôle of devoted mother, which she had taken on herself for a number of years, and she felt with joy that in this relationship she had a standpoint independent of her relation to her husband and Vronsky. This standpoint was—her son. In whatever situation she might be placed, she could not give him up. Her husband might drive her from him, and put her to shame; Vronsky might turn his back on her, and resume his former independent life,—and here again she thought of him with a feeling of anger and reproach,—but she could not leave her son. She had an aim in life; and she must act, act so as to safeguard this relation toward her son, so that they could not take him from her. She must act as speedily as possible before they took him from her. She must take her son and go off. That was the one thing which she now had to do. She must calm herself, and get away from this tormenting situation. The very thought of an action having reference to her son, and of going away with him anywhere, anywhere, already gave her consolation.

She dressed in haste, went down-stairs, and with firm