loudly, but with a peculiar force, 'tell me, I implore you, tell me why did she . . . what led her to this fearful step?' . . .
Anna looked down. 'I don't know,' she said, after a pause of some instants. 'By God, I don't know!' she went on strenuously, supposing from Aratov's gesture that he did not believe her. . . . 'since she came back here certainly she was melancholy, depressed. Something must have happened to her in Moscow — what, I could never guess. But on the other hand, on that fatal day she seemed as it were . . . if not more cheerful, at least more serene than usual. Even I had no presentiment,' added Anna with a bitter smile, as though reproaching herself for it.
'You see,' she began again, it seemed as though at Katia's birth it had been decreed that she was to be unhappy. From her early years she was convinced of it. She would lean her head on her hand, sink into thought, and say, "I shall not live long!" She used to have presentiments. Imagine ! she used to see beforehand, sometimes in a dream and sometimes awake, what was going to happen to her! "If I can't live as I want to live, then I won't live," . . . was a saying of hers too. ..." Our life 's in our own hands, you know." And she proved that!'
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