"Is it true that the youngest Vlasieva is going to marry Topof?"
"Yes; people say that it is fully decided."
"I am astonished at her parents. They say that it is a love-match."
"A love-match? What antediluvian ideas you have! Who speaks of love in our days?" said the ambassador's wife.
"What is to be done about it? That foolish old custom has not entirely gone out of date," said Vronsky.
"So much the worse for those who adhere to it; the only happy marriages that I know about are those of reason."
"Yes; but how often it happens that these marriages of reason break like ropes of sand, precisely because of this love which you affect to scorn!" said Vronsky.
"But what we call a marriage of reason is where both parties take an equal risk. It is like scarlatina, through which we all must pass."
"In that case it would be wise to find an artificial means of inoculation for love, as for small-pox."
"When I was young I fell in love with a sacristan; I should like to know what good that did me!" said the Princess Miagkaya.
"No; but, jesting aside, I believe that to know what love really is, one must have been deceived once, and then been set right," said the Princess Betsy.
"Even after marriage?" asked the ambassador's wife, laughing.
"It is never too late to mend," said the diplomatist, quoting the English proverb.
"But really," interrupted Betsy, "you must be deceived, so as afterwards to get into the right path. What do you think about this?" said she, addressing Anna, who was listening silently to the conversation with a scarcely perceptible smile on her firm lips.
"I think," said Anna, playing with her glove, which she had removed, "I think.... if there are as many opinions as there are heads, then there are as many ways of loving as there are hearts."
