Page 1312 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

went on again. At home, looking after her children, she
had no time to think. So now, after this journey of four
hours, all the thoughts she had suppressed before rushed
swarming into her brain, and she thought over all her life

as she never had before, and from the most different points
of view. Her thoughts seemed strange even to herself. At
first she thought about the children, about whom she was
uneasy, although the princess and Kitty (she reckoned
more upon her) had promised to look after them. ‘If only
Masha does not begin her naughty tricks, if Grisha isn’t
kicked by a horse, and Lily’s stomach isn’t upset again!’
she thought. But these questions of the present were
succeeded by questions of the immediate future. She
began thinking how she had to get a new flat in Moscow
for the coming winter, to renew the drawing room
furniture, and to make her elder girl a cloak. Then
questions of the more remote future occurred to her: how
she was to place her children in the world. ‘The girls are
all right,’ she thought; ‘but the boys?’
‘It’s very well that I’m teaching Grisha, but of course
that’s only because I am free myself now, I’m not with
child. Stiva, of course, there’s no counting on. And with
the help of good-natured friends I can bring them up; but
if there’s another baby coming?...’ And the thought struck

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