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 not say a word, and only gazed with wide-open eyea of amazement at Anna. It was the very thing of which she had dreamed, but now that she knew it was possible she was horror-struck. She felt that it was a quite too simple solution of a too complicated question.

"N'est ce pas immoral?" she asked, after a moment's silence.

"Why? Remember that I must choose between two things: either being pregnant, that is to say, sick, or being the friend, the companion, of my husband; for so I consider him. If that is a doubtful fact to you, it is not so to me," said Anna, in an intentionally superficial and frivolous tone.

"Yes, yes, but...." exclaimed Darya Aleksandrovna, hearing the very same arguments which she had brought up to herself, and no longer finding in them their former weight.

"For you, for other women," proceeded Anna, apparrently divining her thoughts, "there may be some doubt about this; but for me. .... Just think! I am not his wife; he will love me just as long as he loves me; and how, by what means, am I to keep his love? It is by this."

And she put out her white arms in front of her beautiful body.

With extraordinary rapidity, as always happens in moments of emotion, all sorts of thoughts and ideas went rushing through Darya Aleksandrovna's mind.

"I have not tried," she reasoned, "to attract Stiva to myself; he deserted me for some one else, and the first woman for whom he sacrificed me did not retain him by being always pretty and gay. He threw her over and took another. And will Anna be able to fascinate and retain Count Vronsky? If that is what attracts him, then he will be able to find women who dress even better and are more fascinating and merry-hearted. And however white, however beautiful, her bare arms, however beautiful her rounded form, and her animated face framed in her black hair, he will be able to find still