The maid, who had been listening at her door for a long while, came into her room of her own accord.  Anna glanced inquiringly into her face, and blushed with a scared look.  The maid begged her pardon for coming in, saying that she had fancied the bell rang.  She brought her clothes and a note.  The note was from Betsy.  Betsy reminded her that Liza Merkalova and Baroness Shtoltz were coming to play croquet with her that morning with their adorers, Kaluzhsky and old Stremov.  “Come, if only as a study in morals.  I shall expect you,” she finished.

Anna read the note and heaved a deep sigh.

“Nothing, I need nothing,” she said to Annushka, who was rearranging the bottles and brushes on the dressing table.  “You can go.  I’ll dress at once and come down.  I need nothing.”

Annushka went out, but Anna did not begin dressing, and sat in the same position, her head and hands hanging listlessly, and every now and then she shivered all over, seemed as though she would make some gesture, utter some word, and sank back into lifelessness again.  She repeated continually, “My God! my God!” But neither “God” nor “my” had any meaning to her.  The idea of seeking help in her difficulty in religion was as remote from her as seeking help from Alexey Alexandrovitch himself, although she had never had doubts of the faith in which she had been brought up.  She knew that the support of religion was possible only upon condition of renouncing what made up for her the whole meaning of life.  She was not simply miserable, she began to feel alarm at the new spiritual condition, never experienced before, in which she found herself.  She felt as though everything were beginning to be double in her soul, just as objects sometimes appear double to over-tired eyes.  She hardly knew at times what it was she feared, and what she hoped for.  Whether she feared or desired what had happened, or what was going to happen, and exactly what she longed for, she could not have said.

“Ah, what am I doing!” she said to herself, feeling a sudden thrill of pain in both sides of her head.  When she came to herself, she saw that she was holding her hair in both hands, each side of her temples, and pulling it.  She jumped up, and began walking about.

“The coffee is ready, and mademoiselle and Seryozha are waiting,” said Annushka, coming back again and finding Anna in the same position.

“Seryozha?  What about Seryozha?” Anna asked, with sudden eagerness, recollecting her son’s existence for the first time that morning.

“He’s been naughty, I think,” answered Annushka with a smile.

“In what way?”

“Some peaches were lying on the table in the corner room.  I think he slipped in and ate one of them on the sly.”