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134
ANNA KARENINA

ashamed of herself if either of them turned round and saw her, and so she did not take out the mirror. But, even though she did not look at the mirror, she felt that even now it was not too late: for she remembered Sergyeï Ivanovitch, who was especially amiable to her, and Stiva's friend, the good Turovtsuin, who had helped her take care of the children during the time of the scarlatina, and had been in love with her. And then there was still another, a very young man, who, as her husband used jestingly to remark, found her prettier than all her sisters. And all sorts of passionate and impossible romances rose before her imagination.

"Anna has done perfectly right, and I shall never think of reproaching her. She is happy, she makes some one else happy, and she is not worn out as I am, but keeps all her freshness and her mind open to all sorts of interests," said Darya Aleksandrovna, and a roguish smile played over her lips because, as she passed Anna's romantic story in review, she imagined herself simultaneously having almost the same experiences with a sort of collective representation of all the men who had ever been in love with her. She, just like Anna, confessed everything to her husband. And the amazement and perplexity which she imagined Stepan Arkadyevitch displayed at this confession caused her to smile.

With such day-dreams she reached the side road that led from the highway to Vozdvizhenskoye.


CHAPTER XVII

The coachman reined in his four horses, and looked off to the right toward a field of rye where some muzhiks were sitting beside their cart. The bookkeeper at first started to jump down, but afterward reconsidered, and shouted, imperatively summoning a muzhik to the carriage. The breeze which had blown while they were in motion died down, when they stopped; the horse-flies persisted in sticking to the sweaty horses, which kept angrily shaking them off. The metallic sound of whet-