“Annushka, dear, what am I to do?” said Anna, sobbing and sinking helplessly into a chair.

“Why fret yourself so, Anna Arkadyevna?  Why, there’s nothing out of the way.  You drive out a little, and it’ll cheer you up,” said the maid.

“Yes, I’m going,” said Anna, rousing herself and getting up.  “And if there’s a telegram while I’m away, send it on to Darya Alexandrovna’s...but no, I shall be back myself.”

“Yes, I mustn’t think, I must do something, drive somewhere, and most of all, get out of this house,” she said, feeling with terror the strange turmoil going on in her own heart, and she made haste to go out and get into the carriage.

“Where to?” asked Pyotr before getting onto the box.

“To Znamenka, the Oblonskys’.”

Chapter 28

It was bright and sunny.  A fine rain had been falling all the morning, and now it had not long cleared up.  The iron roofs, the flags of the roads, the flints of the pavements, the wheels and leather, the brass and the tinplate of the carriages—­all glistened brightly in the May sunshine.  It was three o’clock, and the very liveliest time in the streets.

As she sat in a corner of the comfortable carriage, that hardly swayed on its supple springs, while the grays trotted swiftly, in the midst of the unceasing rattle of wheels and the changing impressions in the pure air, Anna ran over the events of the last days, and she saw her position quite differently from how it had seemed at home.  Now the thought of death seemed no longer so terrible and so clear to her, and death itself no longer seemed so inevitable.  Now she blamed herself for the humiliation to which she had lowered herself.  “I entreat him to forgive me.  I have given in to him.  I have owned myself in fault.  What for?  Can’t I live without him?” And leaving unanswered the question how she was going to live without him, she fell to reading the signs on the shops.  “Office and warehouse.  Dental surgeon.  Yes, I’ll tell Dolly all about it.  She doesn’t like Vronsky.  I shall be sick and ashamed, but I’ll tell her.  She loves me, and I’ll follow her advice.  I won’t give in to him; I won’t let him train me as he pleases.  Filippov, bun shop.  They say they send their dough to Petersburg.  The Moscow water is so good for it.  Ah, the springs at Mitishtchen, and the pancakes!”

And she remembered how, long, long ago, when she was a girl of seventeen, she had gone with her aunt to Troitsa.  “Riding, too.  Was that really me, with red hands?  How much that seemed to me then splendid and out of reach has become worthless, while what I had then has gone out of my reach forever!  Could I ever have believed then that I could come to such humiliation?  How conceited and self-satisfied he will be when he gets my note!  But I will show him....  How horrid that paint smells!  Why is it they’re always painting and building?