ring for her maid, and still less to go down and meet her son and his governess.
The maid came, and stood long at the door, listening; finally she decided to go to her without a summons. Anna looked at her questioningly, and in her terror she blushed. The maid apologized for coming, saying that she thought she heard the bell. She brought a gown and a note. The note was from Betsy. Betsy reminded her that Liza Merkalova and the Baroness Stolz with their adorers, Kaluzhsky and the old man Stremof, were coming to her house that morning for a game of croquet. "Come and look on, please, as a study of manners. I shall expect you," was the conclusion of the note.
Anna read the letter, and sighed profoundly.
"Nothing, nothing, I need nothing," said she to Annushka, who was arranging the brushes and toilet articles on her dressing-table. "Go away. I will dress myself immediately, and come down. I need nothing."
Annushka went out; yet Anna did not begin to dress, but sat in the same attitude, with bent head and folded hands; and occasionally she would shiver, and begin to make some gesture, to say something, and then fall back into Hstlessness again. She kept saying, "Bozhe moï! Bozhe moï!"[1] but the words had no meaning in her mind. The thought of seeking a refuge from her situation in religion, although she never doubted the faith in which she had been trained, seemed to her as strange as to go and ask help of Alekseï Aleksandrovitch himself. She knew beforehand that the refuge offered by religion was possible only by the absolute renunciation of all that constituted for her the meaning of life. She suffered, and was frightened besides, by a sensation that was new to her experience hitherto, and which seemed to her to take possession of her inmost soul. She seemed to feel double, just as sometimes eyes, when weary, see double. She knew not what she feared, what she desired. She knew not whether she feared and desired what had passed or what was to come, and what she desired she did not know.
- ↑ Literally, "My God."
