Part 1 - Chapter 28

Chapter 28

After the ball, early next morning, Anna Arkadyevna sent her
husband a telegram that she was leaving Moscow the same day.

"No, I must go, I must go"; she explained to her sister-in-law
the change in her plans in a tone that suggested that she had to
remember so many things that there was no enumerating them: "no,
it had really better be today!"

Stepan Arkadyevitch was not dining at home, but he promised to
come and see his sister off at seven o'clock.

Kitty, too, did not come, sending a note that she had a headache.
Dolly and Anna dined alone with the children and the English
governess. Whether it was that the children were fickle, or that
they had acute senses, and felt that Anna was quite different
that day from what she had been when they had taken such a fancy
to her, that she was not now interested in them,--but they had
abruptly dropped their play with their aunt, and their love for
her, and were quite indifferent that she was going away. Anna
was absorbed the whole morning in preparations for her
departure. She wrote notes to her Moscow acquaintances, put down
her accounts, and packed. Altogether Dolly fancied she was not
in a placid state of mind, but in that worried mood, which Dolly
knew well with herself, and which does not come without cause,
and for the most part covers dissatisfaction with self. After
dinner, Anna went up to her room to dress, and Dolly followed
her.

"How queer you are today!" Dolly said to her.

"I? Do you think so? I'm not queer, but I'm nasty. I am like
that sometimes. I keep feeling as if I could cry. It's very
stupid, but it'll pass off," said Anna quickly, and she bent her
flushed face over a tiny bag in which she was packing a nightcap
and some cambric handkerchiefs. Her eyes were particulary
bright, and were continually swimming with tears. "In the same
way I didn't want to leave Petersburg, and now I don't want to go
away from here."

"You came here and did a good deed," said Dolly, looking intently
at her.

Anna looked at her with eyes wet with tears.

"Don't say that, Dolly. I've done nothing, and could do nothing.
I often wonder why people are all in league to spoil me. What
have I done, and what could I do? In your heart there was found
love enough to forgive..."

"If it had not been for you, God knows what would have happened!
How happy you are, Anna!" said Dolly. "Everything is clear and
good in your heart."

"Every heart has its own skeletons, as the English say."

"You have no sort of skeleton, have you? Everything is so clear
in you."

"I have!" said Anna suddenly, and, unexpectedly after her tears,
a sly, ironical smile curved her lips.