And, leaving this question unanswered, she began to read the sign-boards mechanically.
"Kontor i sklad. Zubnoï Vratch[1]—Yes, I will tell Dolly all about it. She does not love Vronsky. It will be hard, shameful, .... but I will confess everything. She loves me. I will follow her advice. I will not allow him to treat me like a child. Philoppof—Kalatchi; they say they send those loaves as far as Petersburg. The water at Moscow is so good; ah! the wells of Muitishchensky!"
And she remembered how long, long ago, when she was seventeen, she had gone with her aunt to the monastery of Troïtsa.[2]
"They traveled with horses in those days. Was it really I, with the red hands? How many things which seemed then beautiful and unattainable are worthless to me now! What I was then, is passed forever beyond recall! And ages could not bring me back. Would I have believed then that I could have fallen into such debasement? .... How proud and self-satisfied he will be when he reads my note! But I will tell him. .... How disagreeable this paint smells! Why are they always painting and building? Modui i uborui. Fashionable Dressmaker," she read.
A man bowed to her; it was Annushka's husband.
"Our parasites, as Vronsky says. Ours? Why ours? Ah, if one could tear out the past by the root! But that's impossible; one can only avoid thinking about it. And I do that."
And yet, here she recalled her past with Alekseï Aleksandrovitch, and how she had driven him out of her memory.
"Dolly will think that I am leaving the second husband, and that I am, therefore, really bad. Do I want to be good? I cannot." .... And she felt the tears com-
- ↑ Office and warehouse. Surgeon-Dentist.
- ↑ The Troïtskaïa Lavra, or Trinity Laura, near Moscow, founded by St. Sergius in the fourteenth century in the time of the Grand Prince Simeon; the richest and most famous institution of its kind in Russia. At one time it had 700 monks and 110,000 souls, or male serfs.
