can I say? It is shameful to confess it! but I .... I am unpardonably happy. What has happened is like a piece of enchantment; like a dream where everything was terrible, agonizing, and suddenly you wake up and realize that it was only a nightmare. I had been asleep, I had suffered awful agonies, and now that is all long, long past. And how especially happy I am now that we are together!" and she looked at Dolly with a timid, questioning smile.
"How glad I am!" Darya Aleksandrovna answered, more coldly than she wished. "I am glad for you; .... but why have you not written me?"
"Why? .... Because I did not dare. .... You knew my position."
"Not dare? to me! If you knew how I ...."
Dolly was about to tell her about the reflections she had had on the journey, but somehow it did not seem to her to be the fitting place. "We will have our talk by and by," she added. "What is that group of buildings, or little village rather?" she asked, wishing to change the conversation, and pointing to some green and red roofs which appeared through the acacias and lilac trees.
But Anna did not reply to her question.
"No, no! how do you feel about my position? What do you think of it? tell me!" Anna went on.
"I think...." began Darya Aleksandrovna; but at this instant Vasenka Veslovsky, in his short jacket, spurring the cob into a trot with his right leg and creaking terribly on the leather side-saddle, went dashing by them.
"It goes, Anna Arkadyevna," he shouted.
Anna did not even look at him, but again it seemed to Darya Aleksandrovna that it was impossible to begin on this long conversation in the carriage, and so she said less than she thought.
"I do not think about it at all," said she. "I love you and always have loved you. And when we love people so, we love them for what they are, not for what we wish they were."
Anna turned her eyes away from her friend's face, half
