She had not time to undo, and so carried back with her, the parcel of toys she had chosen the day before in a toy shop with such love and sorrow.

Chapter 31

As intensely as Anna had longed to see her son, and long as she had been thinking of it and preparing herself for it, she had not in the least expected that seeing him would affect her so deeply.  On getting back to her lonely rooms in the hotel she could not for a long while understand why she was there.  “Yes, it’s all over, and I am again alone,” she said to herself, and without taking off her hat she sat down in a low chair by the hearth.  Fixing her eyes on a bronze clock standing on a table between the windows, she tried to think.

The French maid brought from abroad came in to suggest she should dress.  She gazed at her wonderingly and said, “Presently.”  A footman offered her coffee.  “Later on,” she said.

The Italian nurse, after having taken the baby out in her best, came in with her, and brought her to Anna.  The plump, well-fed little baby, on seeing her mother, as she always did, held out her fat little hands, and with a smile on her toothless mouth, began, like a fish with a float, bobbing her fingers up and down the starched folds of her embroidered skirt, making them rustle.  It was impossible not to smile, not to kiss the baby, impossible not to hold out a finger for her to clutch, crowing and prancing all over; impossible not to offer her a lip which she sucked into her little mouth by way of a kiss.  And all this Anna did, and took her in her arms and made her dance, and kissed her fresh little cheek and bare little elbows; but at the sight of this child it was plainer than ever to her that the feeling she had for her could not be called love in comparison with what she felt for Seryozha.  Everything in this baby was charming, but for some reason all this did not go deep to her heart.  On her first child, though the child of an unloved father, had been concentrated all the love that had never found satisfaction.  Her baby girl had been born in the most painful circumstances and had not had a hundredth part of the care and thought which had been concentrated on her first child.  Besides, in the little girl everything was still in the future, while Seryozha was by now almost a personality, and a personality dearly loved.  In him there was a conflict of thought and feeling; he understood her, he loved her, he judged her, she thought, recalling his words and his eyes.  And she was forever—­not physically only but spiritually—­divided from him, and it was impossible to set this right.