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 passed through the wicket-gate again into the park, he looked in the direction where Anna was gone, and, having convinced himself that they were out of her sight and hearing, he began:—

"You have guessed that I wanted to have a talk with you," said he, looking at her with his smiling eyes, "I am not mistaken in believing that you are Anna's friend, am I?"

He took off his hat, and, taking out his handkerchief wiped his head, which was growing bald.

Darya Aleksandrovna made no reply, and only gazed at him in alarm. Now that she was entirely alone with him, she suddenly felt terror-stricken; his smiling eyes and the stern expression of his face frightened her.

The most diverse suppositions as to what he might be wanting to talk with her about chased one another through her mind.

"Can it be that he is going to ask me to come with my children and make them a visit, and I shall be obliged to decline? or is it that he wants me to find society for Anna when she comes to Moscow? .... Or is he going to speak of Vasenka Veslovsky and his relations to Anna? Or can it be about Kitty, and that he wants to confess that he was to blame toward her?"

She thought over everything that might be disagreeable, but never suspected what he really wanted to talk with her about.

"You have such an influence over Anna, she is so fond of you," said he, "help me."

Darya Aleksandrovna looked timidly and questioningly into Vronsky's energetic face, which, as they passed under the linden trees, was now lighted up by the flecking sunbeams and then again darkened by the shadows, and she waited for him to proceed; but he, catching his cane in the paving-stones, walked in silence by her side.

"Of all Anna's friends, you are the only one who has come to see her—I do not count the Princess Varvara—I know very well it is not because you approve of our position; it is because you love Anna, and, knowing