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314 she was; and it was long before her trembling hands could find the matches, in order to light another candle in place of the one that had burned down and gone out.

"No, no! anything .... only to live! I love him, and he loves me; these dreadful days will go by!" she said to herself, feeling that tears of joy poured down her cheeks at her return to life. And to escape her terror she fled to Vronsky's library.

He was in his library, soundly sleeping. She went to him, and, holding the candle above his face, looked at him a long time. Now, as he slept, she felt such love for him, that at the sight of him she could not refrain from tears of tenderness; but she knew that, if he woke he would look at her with a cold, self-justifying look, and that before she spoke a word of her love she would not be able to resist the temptation of proving to him how wrong he was.

Without waking him she went back to her room; and, after a second dose of opium, she fell into a heavy sleep which lasted till morning, and all the time she was conscious of herself.

Toward morning she had the frightful nightmare which she had experienced several times even before her liaison with Vronsky. She saw a little old man, with unkempt beard, doing something, bending over a gourd, and muttering unintelligible French words; and, as always when she had this nightmare, and therein lay the horror of the dream, she felt that the little old man paid no heed to her, but did this horrible something in the gourd over her head. She awoke in a cold perspiration.

When she got up, the events of the day before seemed enveloped in mist.

"There was a quarrel. It has happened several times before. I said I had a headache, and he didn't come to see me. That is all. To-morrow we shall go away. I must see him, and get ready for our departure," she said to herself; and, knowing that he was in his library, she started to go to him.

But, in crossing the drawing-room, her attention was