Part 1 - Chapter 29

Chapter 29

"Come, it's all over, and thank God!" was the first thought that
came to Anna Arkadyevna, when she had said good-bye for the last
time to her brother, who had stood blocking up the entrance to
the carriage till the third bell rang. She sat down on her
lounge beside Annushka, and looked about her in the twilight of
the sleeping-carriage. "Thank God! tomorrow I shall see Seryozha
and Alexey Alexandrovitch, and my life will go on in the old way,
all nice and as usual."

Still in the same anxious frame of mind, as she had been all that
day, Anna took pleasure in arranging herself for the journey with
great care. With her little deft hands she opened and shut her
little red bag, took out a cushion, laid it on her knees, and
carefully wrapping up her feet, settled herself comfortably. An
invalid lady had already lain down to sleep. Two other ladies
began talking to Anna, and a stout elderly lady tucked up her
feet, and made observations about the heating of the train. Anna
answered a few words, but not foreseeing any entertainment from
the conversation, she asked Annushka to get a lamp, hooked it
onto the arm of her seat, and took from her bag a paper knife and
an English novel. At first her reading made no progress. The
fuss and bustle were disturbing; then when the train had started,
she could not help listening to the noises; then the snow beating
on the left window and sticking to the pane, and the sight of the
muffled guard passing by, covered with snow on one side, and the
conversations about the terrible snowstorm raging outside,
distracted her attention. Farther on, it was continually the
same again and again: the same shaking and rattling, the same
snow on the window, the same rapid transitions from steaming
heat to cold, and back again to heat, the same passing glimpses
of the same figures in the twilight, and the same voices, and
Anna began to read and to understand what she read. Annushka was
already dozing, the red bag on her lap, clutched by her broad
hands, in gloves, of which one was torn. Anna Arkadyevna read
and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is,
to follow the reflection of other people's lives. She had too
great a desire to live herself. If she read that the heroine of
the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with
noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a
member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering
the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the
hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised
everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same.
But there was no chance of doing anything; and twisting the
smooth paper knife in her little