Page 1313 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

her how untruly it was said that the curse laid on woman
was that in sorrow she should bring forth children.
‘The birth itself, that’s nothing; but the months of
carrying the child—that’s what’s so intolerable,’ she

thought, picturing to herself her last pregnancy, and the
death of the last baby. And she recalled the conversation
she had just had with the young woman at the inn. On
being asked whether she had any children, the handsome
young woman had answered cheerfully:
‘I had a girl baby, but God set me free; I buried her last
Lent.’
‘Well, did you grieve very much for her?’ asked Darya
Alexandrovna.
‘Why grieve? The old man has grandchildren enough
as it is. It was only a trouble. No working, nor nothing.
Only a tie.’
This answer had struck Darya Alexandrovna as
revolting in spite of the good-natured and pleasing face of
the young woman; but now she could not help recalling
these words. In those cynical words there was indeed a
grain of truth.
‘Yes, altogether,’ thought Darya Alexandrovna, looking
back over her whole existence during those fifteen years of
her married life, ‘pregnancy, sickness, mental incapacity,

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