Chapter 29

She had now been two days in Peterburg. The thought of her son never left her for a single instant, but she had not yet seen him. To go straight to the house, where she might meet Alexei Alexandrovich - that she felt she had no right to do. She might be refused admittance and insulted. To write and so enter into relations with her husband - the thought of doing that made her miserable; she could only be at peace when she did not think of her husband. To get a glimpse of her son out walking, finding out where and when he went out, was not enough for her; she had so looked forward to this meeting, she had so much she must say to him, she so longed to embrace him, to kiss him. Seriozha's old nurse might be a help to her and show her what to do. But the nurse was not now living in Alexei Alexandrovich's house. In this uncertainty, and in efforts to find the nurse, two days had slipped by.

Hearing of the close intimacy between Alexei Alexandrovich and Countess Lidia Ivanovna, Anna decided on the third day to write her a letter, which cost her great pains, and in which she intentionally said that permission to see her son must depend on her husband's magnanimity. She knew that if the letter were shown to her husband, he would keep up his role of magnanimity, and would not refuse her request.

The commissionaire who took the letter had brought her back the most cruel and unexpected answer - that there was no answer. She had never felt so humiliated as at the moment when, sending for commissionaire, she heard from him the exact account of how he had waited, and how afterward he had been told there was no answer. Anna felt humiliated, insulted, but she saw that from her point of view Countess Lidia Ivanovna was right. Her suffering was the more poignant since she had to bear it in solitude. She could not and would not share it with Vronsky. She knew that to him, although he was the primary cause of her distress, the question of her seeing her son would seem a matter of very little consequence. She knew that he would never be capable of understanding all the depth of her suffering, that for his cool tone at any allusion to it she would begin to hate him. And she dreaded that more than anything in the world, and so she hid from him everything that related to her son.

Spending the whole day at home she considered ways of seeing her son, and had reached a decision to write to her husband. She was just composing this letter when she was handed the letter from Lidia Ivanovna. The Countess's silence had subdued and depressed her, but the letter, all that she read between the lines in it, so exasperated her, this malice was so revolting beside her passionate, legitimate tenderness for her son, that she turned against other people and left off blaming herself.

`This coldness is simulation of feeling!' she said to herself. `They must needs insult me and torture the child, and I am to submit to it! Not on any consideration! She is worse than I am. I don't lie, anyway.' And she decided on the spot that next day, Seriozha's birthday, she would go straight to her husband's house, bribe the servants, deceive the people, but at any cost see her son and overturn the hideous deception with which they were encompassing the unhappy child.

She went to a toyshop, bought toys, and thought over a plan of action. She would go early in the morning at eight o'clock, when Alexei Alexandrovich would be certain not to be up. She would have money in her hand to give the hall porter and the footman, so that they should let her in, and, without raising her veil, she would say that she had come from Seriozha's godfather to congratulate him, and that she had been charged to leave the toys at his bedside. She had prepared everything but the words she should say to her son. Often she dreamed of it, she could never think of anything.