poignant that she had to bear it in solitude.  She could not and would not share it with Vronsky.  She knew that to him, although he was the primary cause of her distress, the question of her seeing her son would seem a matter of very little consequence.  She knew that he would never be capable of understanding all the depth of her suffering, that for his cool tone at any allusion to it she would begin to hate him.  And she dreaded that more than anything in the world, and so she hid from him everything that related to her son.  Spending the whole day at home she considered ways of seeing her son, and had reached a decision to write to her husband.  She was just composing this letter when she was handed the letter from Lidia Ivanovna.  The countess’s silence had subdued and depressed her, but the letter, all that she read between the lines in it, so exasperated her, this malice was so revolting beside her passionate, legitimate tenderness for her son, that she turned against other people and left off blaming herself.

“This coldness—­this pretense of feeling!” she said to herself.  “They must needs insult me and torture the child, and I am to submit to it!  Not on any consideration!  She is worse than I am.  I don’t lie, anyway.”  And she decided on the spot that next day, Seryozha’s birthday, she would go straight to her husband’s house, bribe or deceive the servants, but at any cost see her son and overturn the hideous deception with which they were encompassing the unhappy child.

She went to a toy shop, bought toys and thought over a plan of action.  She would go early in the morning at eight o’clock, when Alexey Alexandrovitch would be certain not to be up.  She would have money in her hand to give the hall porter and the footman, so that they should let her in, and not raising her veil, she would say that she had come from Seryozha’s godfather to congratulate him, and that she had been charged to leave the toys at his bedside.  She had prepared everything but the words she should say to her son.  Often as she had dreamed of it, she could never think of anything.

The next day, at eight o’clock in the morning, Anna got out of a hired sledge and rang at the front entrance of her former home.

“Run and see what’s wanted.  Some lady,” said Kapitonitch, who, not yet dressed, in his overcoat and galoshes, had peeped out of the window and seen a lady in a veil standing close up to the door.  His assistant, a lad Anna did not know, had no sooner opened the door to her than she came in, and pulling a three-rouble note out of her muff put it hurriedly into his hand.

“Seryozha—­Sergey Alexeitch,” she said, and was going on.  Scrutinizing the note, the porter’s assistant stopped her at the second glass door.

“Whom do you want?” he asked.

She did not hear his words and made no answer.

Noticing the embarrassment of the unknown lady, Kapitonitch went out to her, opened the second door for her, and asked her what she was pleased to want.