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Anna meantime went back to her boudoir, took a wineglass, and dropped into it several drops of a medicine, of which the principal ingredient was morphine. After drinking it off and sitting still a little while, she went into her bedroom in a soothed and more cheerful frame of mind.

When she went into the bedroom, Vronsky looked intently at her.

He was looking for traces of the conversation which he knew, staying so long in Dolly's room, she must have had with her. But in her expression of restrained excitement, and of a sort of reserve, he could find nothing but the beauty that always bewitched him afresh though he was used to it, the consciousness of it, and the desire that it should affect him. He did not want to ask her what they had been talking of, but he hoped that she would tell him something of her own accord. But she only said:

`I am so glad you like Dolly. You do, don't you?'

`Oh, I've known her a long while. She's very goodhearted, I suppose, mais excessivement terre-à-terre . Still, I'm very glad to see her.'

He took Anna's hand and looked inquiringly into her eyes.

Misinterpreting the look, she smiled to him.

Next morning, in spite of the protests of her hosts, Darya Alexandrovna prepared for her homeward journey. Levin's coachman, in his by no means new coat and shabby hat, with his ill-matched horses and his carriage with the patched mudguards, drove with gloomy determination into the covered gravel approach.

Darya Alexandrovna disliked taking leave of Princess Varvara and the gentlemen of the party. After a day spent together, both she and her hosts were distinctly aware that they did not get on together, and that it was better for them not to meet. Only Anna was sad. She knew that now, after Dolly's departure, no one again would stir up within her soul the feelings that had been roused by their conversation. It hurt her to stir up these feelings, but yet she knew that that was the best part of her soul, and that that part of her soul would quickly grow weedy in the life she was leading.

As she drove out into the open country, Darya Alexandrovna had a delightful sense of relief, and she felt tempted to ask the two men how they had liked being at Vronsky's, when suddenly the coachman, Philip, expressed himself unasked:

`Rolling in wealth they may be, but three pots of oats was all they gave us. Everything cleared up till there wasn't a grain left by cock-crow.

What are three pots? A mere mouthful! And oats now you could get from innkeepers for forty-five kopecks. At our place, no fear, all comers may have as much as they can eat.'

`The master's a screw,' put in the countinghouse clerk.

`Well, did you like their horses?' asked Dolly.

`The horses! There's no two opinions about them. And the food was good. But it seemed to me sort of dreary there, Darya Alexandrovna.

I don't know what you thought,' he said, turning his handsome, good-natured face to her.

`I thought so too. Well, shall we get home by evening?'

`Eh, we must!'

On reaching home and finding everyone entirely safe and particularly charming, Darya Alexandrovna began with great liveliness telling them about her arrival, her warm reception, about the luxury and good taste in which the Vronskys lived, and about their recreations, and she would not allow a word to be said against them.

`One has to know Anna and Vronsky - I have got to know him better now - to see how fine they are, and how touching,' she said, speaking now with perfect sincerity, and forgetting the vague feeling of dissatisfaction and awkwardness she had experienced there.

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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 6, Chapter 25[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 25 Vronsky and Anna spent the whole summer and part of the autumn in the country, living in just the same condition, and still taking no steps to obtain a divorce. It was a decided thing between them that they should not go away anywhere; but both felt, the longer they lived alone, especially in the autumn, and without guests in the house, that they could not stand this existence, and that they would have to change it.

Their life was apparently such that nothing better could be desired.

They had the fullest abundance of everything; they had a child, and both had occupation. Anna devoted just as much care to her appearance when they had no visitors, and she did a great deal of reading, both of novels and of what serious literature was in fashion. She ordered all the books that were praised in the foreign papers and journals she received, and read them with that concentrated attention which is only given to what is read in seclusion. Moreover, every subject that was of interest to Vronsky, she studied in books and special journals, so that he often went straight to her with questions relating to agriculture or architecture, sometimes even with questions relating to horse breeding or sport. He was amazed at her knowledge, her memory, and at first was disposed to doubt it, to ask for confirmation of her facts; and she would find what he asked for in some book, and show it to him.