would not say all he thought. And she knew that her last hope had failed her. This was not what she had been looking for.

`You see the sort of man he is,' she said, with a shaking voice; `he...'

`Forgive me, but I rejoice at it,' Vronsky interrupted. `For God's sake, let me finish!' he added, his eyes imploring her to give him time to explain his words. `I rejoice, because things cannot, cannot possibly remain as he supposes.'

`Why can't they?' Anna said, restraining her tears, and obviously attaching no sort of consequence to what he said. She felt that her fate was sealed.

Vronsky meant that after the duel - inevitable, he thought - things could not go on as before, but he said something different.

`It can't go on. I hope that now you will leave him. I hope' - he was confused, and reddened - `that you will let me arrange and plan our life. Tomorrow...' he was beginning.

She did not let him go on.

`But my child!' she shrieked. `You see what he writes! I should have to leave him, and I can't and won't do that.'

`But, for God's sake, which is better? To leave your child, or keep up this degrading situation?'

`To whom is it degrading?'

`To all, and most of all to you.'

`You say degrading... Don't say that. These words have no meaning for me,' she said in a shaking voice. She did not want him now to say what was untrue. She had nothing left her but his love, and she wanted to love him. `Don't you understand that from the day I loved you everything has changed for me? For me there is one thing, and one thing only - your love. If that's mine, I feel so exalted, so strong, that nothing can be degrading to me. I am proud of my position, because... proud of being... proud...' She could not say what she was proud of. Tears of shame and despair choked her utterance. She stood still and sobbed.

He felt, too, something swelling in his throat and twitching in his nose, and for the first time in his life he felt on the point of weeping. He could not have said exactly what it was touched him so; he felt sorry for her, and he felt he could not help her, and with that he knew that he was to blame for her wretchedness, and that he had done something wrong.

`Isn't a divorce possible?' he said feebly. She shook her head, without answering. `Couldn't you take your son, and still leave him?

`Yes; but it all depends on him. Now I must go to him,' she said shortly. Her presentiment that all would again go on in the old way had not deceived her.

`On Tuesday I shall be in Peterburg, and everything can be settled.'

`Yes,' she said. `But don't let us talk any more of it.'

Anna's carriage, which she had sent away, and ordered to come back to the little gate of the Vrede garden, drove up. Anna said good-by to Vronsky, and drove home.