her, she busied herself incessantly all day; at night she took morphine.
To be sure, there was one means left—not to keep him with her—for this she wished nothing else but his love—but to bind him to her, to be in such a relation to him that he would not abandon her. This means was divorce and marriage; and she began to desire it, and resolved that she would agree to it the first time he or Stiva spoke about it again. With such thoughts she spent five days without him, the five days he expected to be away.
Drives and walks, conversations with the Princess Varvara, visits to the hospital, and, above all, reading, the reading of one book after another, occupied her time. But on the sixth day, when the coachman returned without bringing Vronsky, she felt that she no longer had strength enough left to smother the thought about him and what he was doing at Kashin. Just at this very time her little girl was taken ill. Anna attended to her, but it did not divert her mind, the more as the little one was not dangerously ill. Do the best she could, she did not love this child, and she could not pretend to feelings which had no existence.
On the evening of the sixth day, while she was entirely alone, she felt such apprehension about him that she almost made up her mind to start for the city herself, but after a long deliberation, she wrote the prevaricating note and sent it by a special messenger.
When, the next morning, she received his letter, she regretted hers. With horror she anticipated the repetition of that severe look which he would give her on his return—especially when he learned that his daughter had not been dangerously ill. But still she was glad she had written him. Now Anna acknowledged to herself that he might be annoyed by her, that he might miss his liberty, but yet she was glad that he was coming; suppose he was annoyed by her, still he would be there with her so that she should see him, so that she should be aware of his every motion.
She was sitting in the parlor, by the lamp, reading a
