Modes et robes,” she read.  A man bowed to her.  It was Annushka’s husband.  “Our parasites”; she remembered how Vronsky had said that.  “Our?  Why our?  What’s so awful is that one can’t tear up the past by its roots.  One can’t tear it out, but one can hide one’s memory of it.  And I’ll hide it.”  And then she thought of her past with Alexey Alexandrovitch, of how she had blotted the memory of it out of her life.  “Dolly will think I’m leaving my second husband, and so I certainly must be in the wrong.  As if I cared to be right!  I can’t help it!” she said, and she wanted to cry.  But at once she fell to wondering what those two girls could be smiling about.  “Love, most likely.  They don’t know how dreary it is, how low....  The boulevard and the children.  Three boys running, playing at horses.  Seryozha!  And I’m losing everything and not getting him back.  Yes, I’m losing everything, if he doesn’t return.  Perhaps he was late for the train and has come back by now.  Longing for humiliation again!” she said to herself.  “No, I’ll go to Dolly, and say straight out to her, I’m unhappy, I deserve this, I’m to blame, but still I’m unhappy, help me.  These horses, this carriage—­how loathsome I am to myself in this carriage—­all his; but I won’t see them again.”

Thinking over the words in which she would tell Dolly, and mentally working her heart up to great bitterness, Anna went upstairs.

“Is there anyone with her?” she asked in the hall.

“Katerina Alexandrovna Levin,” answered the footman.

“Kitty!  Kitty, whom Vronsky was in love with!” thought Anna, “the girl he thinks of with love.  He’s sorry he didn’t marry her.  But me he thinks of with hatred, and is sorry he had anything to do with me.”

The sisters were having a consultation about nursing when Anna called.  Dolly went down alone to see the visitor who had interrupted their conversation.

“Well, so you’ve not gone away yet?  I meant to have come to you,” she said; “I had a letter from Stiva today.”

“We had a telegram too,” answered Anna, looking round for Kitty.

“He writes that he can’t make out quite what Alexey Alexandrovitch wants, but he won’t go away without a decisive answer.”

“I thought you had someone with you.  Can I see the letter?”

“Yes; Kitty,” said Dolly, embarrassed.  “She stayed in the nursery.  She has been very ill.”

“So I heard.  May I see the letter?”

“I’ll get it directly.  But he doesn’t refuse; on the contrary, Stiva has hopes,” said Dolly, stopping in the doorway.

“I haven’t, and indeed I don’t wish it,” said Anna.