“No, I don’t know; it’s not right,” was all she said, with an expression of disgust on her face.

“Yes, but you mustn’t forget that you and I....  And besides that,” added Anna, in spite of the wealth of her arguments and the poverty of Dolly’s objections, seeming still to admit that it was not right, “don’t forget the chief point, that I am not now in the same position as you.  For you the question is:  do you desire not to have any more children; while for me it is:  do I desire to have them?  And that’s a great difference.  You must see that I can’t desire it in my position.”

Darya Alexandrovna made no reply.  She suddenly felt that she had got far away from Anna; that there lay between them a barrier of questions on which they could never agree, and about which it was better not to speak.

Chapter 24

“Then there is all the more reason for you to legalize your position, if possible,” said Dolly.

“Yes, if possible,” said Anna, speaking all at once in an utterly different tone, subdued and mournful.

“Surely you don’t mean a divorce is impossible?  I was told your husband had consented to it.”

“Dolly, I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Oh, we won’t then,” Darya Alexandrovna hastened to say, noticing the expression of suffering on Anna’s face.  “All I see is that you take too gloomy a view of things.”

“I?  Not at all!  I’m always bright and happy.  You see, je fais des passions. Veslovsky...”

“Yes, to tell the truth, I don’t like Veslovsky’s tone,” said Darya Alexandrovna, anxious to change the subject.

“Oh, that’s nonsense!  It amuses Alexey, and that’s all; but he’s a boy, and quite under my control.  You know, I turn him as I please.  It’s just as it might be with your Grisha....  Dolly!”—­ she suddenly changed the subject—­“you say I take too gloomy a view of things.  You can’t understand.  It’s too awful!  I try not to take any view of it at all.”

“But I think you ought to.  You ought to do all you can.”

“But what can I do?  Nothing.  You tell me to marry Alexey, and say I don’t think about it.  I don’t think about it!” she repeated, and a flush rose into her face.  She got up, straightening her chest, and sighed heavily.  With her light step she began pacing up and down the room, stopping now and then.  “I don’t think of it?  Not a day, not an hour passes that I don’t think of it, and blame myself for thinking of it...because thinking of that may drive me mad.  Drive me mad!” she repeated.  “When I think of it, I can’t sleep without morphine.  But never mind.  Let us talk quietly.  They tell me, divorce.  In the first place, he won’t give me a divorce.  He’s under the influence of Countess Lidia Ivanovna now.”

Darya Alexandrovna, sitting erect on a chair, turned her head, following Anna with a face of sympathetic suffering.