`A woman whose heart does not tell her where her son's happiness and honor lie has no heart.'

`I repeat my request that you will not speak disrespectfully of my mother, whom I respect,' he said, raising his voice and looking sternly at her.

She did not answer. Looking intently at him, at his face, his hands, she recalled all the details of their reconciliation the previous day, and his passionate caresses. `There, just such caresses he has lavished, and will lavish, and longs to lavish on other women!' she thought.

`You don't love your mother. That's all talk, and talk, and talk!' she said, looking at him with hatred in her eyes.

`Even if so, you must...'

`Must decide, and I have decided,' she said, and she would have gone away, but at that moment Iashvin walked into the room. Anna greeted him and remained.

Why, when there was a tempest in her soul, and she felt she was standing at a turning point in her life, which might have fearful consequences - why, at that minute, she had to keep up appearances before an outsider, who sooner or later must know it all - she did not know. But at once quelling the storm within her, she sat down and began talking to their guest.

`Well, how are you getting on? Has your debt been paid you?' she asked Iashvin.

`Oh, pretty fair; I fancy I shan't get it all, while I ought to go on Wednesday. And when are you off?' said Iashvin, looking at Vronsky, and unmistakably surmising a quarrel.

`The day after tomorrow, I think,' said Vronsky.

`You've been intending to go so long, though.'

`But now it's quite decided,' said Anna, looking Vronsky straight in the face with a look which told him not to dream of the possibility of reconciliation.

`Don't you feel sorry for that unlucky Pievtsov?' she went on, talking to Iashvin.

`I've never asked myself the question, Anna Arkadyevna, whether I'm sorry for him or not. You see, all my fortune's here' - he touched his breast pocket - `and just now I'm a wealthy man. But today I'm going to the club, and I may come out a beggar. You see, whoever sits down to play with me wants to leave me without a shirt to my back, and I wish the same to him. And so we fight it out, and that's the pleasure of it.'

`Well, but suppose you were married,' said Anna, `how would it be for your wife?'

Iashvin laughed.

`That's to all appearance why I'm not married, and never mean to be.'

`And Helsingfors?' said Vronsky, entering into the conversation and glancing at Anna's smiling face. Meeting his eyes, Anna's face instantly took a coldly severe expression as though she were saying to him: `It's not forgotten. It's all the same.'

`Were you really in love?' she said to Iashvin.