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 marrying me merely for the sake of being married? What if she does not herself know what she is doing?" he asked himself, "Will she, perhaps, see her mistake, and discover, after we are married, that she does not love me, and that she never can love me?"

And strange, even painful, thoughts about Kitty came to his mind; he began to be violently jealous of Vronsky, just as he had been the year before; there came up before him, like the memory of yesterday, that evening when he had seen them together, and he suspected her of not having confessed everything to him.

He quickly sprang up.

"No," said he, in despair, "I cannot let this remain so! I will go and find her,—I will talk with her, and say to her again, for the last time: 'We are free; is it not better to stop just where we are? Anything is better than lifelong unhappiness, shame, distrust!'"

And with despair in his heart, full of hatred toward all mankind, toward himself and Kitty, he left the hotel and hastened to her house.

He found her in one of the rear rooms sitting on a large chest, busy with her maid, looking over dresses of all colors, spread out over the backs of the chairs and on the floor.

"Akh!" she exclaimed, beaming with joy at seeing him. "What brings thee? What brings you?" Even up to this last day she sometimes said tui, sometimes vui. "I was not expecting you! I am just disposing of my maiden wardrobe."

"Ah! that is good!" he replied, frowning at the maid.

"Run away, Duniasha; I will call you," said Kitty; and as soon as she had gone she asked, using the second person of the pronoun, "What is the matter with thee?" this time resolutely. She remarked her lover's strange, excited, and gloomy face, and was seized with fear.

"Kitty, I am in torture, and I cannot suffer alone!" he said to her with despair in his voice, stopping in front of her and looking into her eyes in a beseeching