`Well, then, let us sit here.'

Oh, yes,' answered Darya Alexandrovna, putting down her sunshade, `but...'

`No,' he broke in, and unconsciously, oblivious of the awkward position in which he was putting his companion, he stopped abruptly, so that she had to stop short too. `No one feels more deeply and intensely than I do all the difficulty of Anna's position; and that you may well understand, if you do me the honor of supposing I have any heart. I am to blame for that position, and that is why I feel it.'

`I understand,' said Darya Alexandrovna, involuntarily admiring the sincerity and firmness with which he said this. `But just because you feel yourself responsible, you exaggerate it, I am afraid,' she said. `Her position in the world is difficult, I can well understand.'

`In the world it is hell!' he brought out quickly, frowning darkly. `You can't imagine moral sufferings greater than what she went through in Peterburg during that fortnight.... And I beg you to believe it.'

`Yes, but here, so long as neither Anna... nor you want society...'

`Society!' he said contemptuously. `How could I want society?'

`So far - and it may be so always - you are happy and at peace. I see in Anna that she is happy, perfectly happy - she has had time to tell me so much already,' said Darya Alexandrovna, smiling; and involuntarily, as she said this, at the same moment a doubt entered her mind whether Anna really were happy.

But Vronsky, it appeared, had no doubts on that score.

`Yes, yes,' he said, `I know that she has revived after all her sufferings; she is happy. She is happy in the present. But I?... I am afraid of what is before us... I beg your pardon - you would like to walk on?'

`No, I don't mind.'

`Well, then, let us sit here.'

Darya Alexandrovna sat down on a garden seat in a corner of the avenue. He stood up, facing her.

`I see that she is happy,' he repeated, and the doubt whether she were happy sank more deeply into Darya Alexandrovna's mind. `But can it last? Whether we have acted rightly or wrongly is another question, but the die is cast,' he said, passing from Russian to French, `and we are bound together for life. We are united by all the ties of love that we hold most sacred. We have a child, we may have other children. But the law and all the conditions of our position are such that thousands of complications arise which she does not see at present, and does not want to see, setting her heart at rest after all these sufferings and ordeals. And that one can well understand. But I can't help seeing them. My daughter is by law not my daughter, but Karenin's. I cannot bear this falsity!' he said, with a vigorous gesture of refusal, and he looked with gloomy inquiry toward Darya Alexandrovna.