Page 1381 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

unhappy; while if they are unhappy, I alone should be to
blame for it.’
These were the very arguments Darya Alexandrovna
had used in her own reflections; but she heard them

without understanding them. ‘How can one wrong
creatures that don’t exist?’ she thought. And all at once the
idea struck her: could it possibly, under any circumstances,
have been better for her favorite Grisha if he had never
existed? And this seemed to her so wild, so strange, that
she shook her head to drive away this tangle of whirling,
mad ideas.
‘No, I don’t know; it’s not right,’ was all she said, with
an expression of disgust on her face.
‘Yes, but you mustn’t forget that you and I.... And
besides that,’ added Anna, in spite of the wealth of her
arguments and the poverty of Dolly’s objections, seeming
still to admit that it was not right, ‘don’t forget the chief
point, that I am not now in the same position as you. For
you the question is: do you desire not to have any more
children; while for me it is: do I desire to have them? And
that’s a great difference. You must see that I can’t desire it
in my position.’
Darya Alexandrovna made no reply. She suddenly felt
that she had got far away from Anna; that there lay

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