This had irritated Anna. She saw in this a contemptuous reference to her occupations. And she had bethought her of a phrase to pay him back for the pain he had inflicted upon her, and had uttered it.

`I don't expect you to understand me, my feelings, as anyone who loved me might, but simple delicacy I did expect,' she had said.

And he had actually flushed with vexation, and had said something unpleasant. She could not recall her answer, but at that point, with an unmistakable desire to wound her too, he had said:

`I feel no interest in your infatuation over this girl, that's true, because I see it's unnatural.'

The cruelty with which he shattered the world she had built up for herself so laboriously to enable her to endure her hard life, the injustice with which he had accused her of affectation, of artificiality, aroused her.

`I am very sorry that nothing but the coarse and material is comprehensible and natural to you,' she had said, and walked out of the room.

When he had come in to her yesterday evening, they had not referred to the quarrel; both felt that the quarrel had been smoothed over, but was not at an end.

Today he had not been at home all day, and she felt so lonely and wretched in being on bad terms with him that she wanted to forget it all, to forgive him, and be reconciled with him; she wanted to throw the blame on herself and to justify him.

`I am myself to blame. I'm irritable, I'm insanely jealous. I will make it up with him, and we'll go away to the country; there I shall be more at peace,' she said to herself.

`Unnatural!' She suddenly recalled the word that had stung her most of all, not so much the word itself as the intent to wound her with which it was said. `I know what he meant; he meant - unnatural, not loving my own daughter to love another person's child. What does he know of love for children, of my love for Seriozha, whom I've sacrificed for him? But that wish to wound me! No, he loves another woman, it can't be otherwise.'

And perceiving that, while trying to regain her peace of mind, she had gone round the same circle that she had been round so often before, and had come back to her former state of exasperation, she was horrified at herself. `Can it be impossible? Can I really take the blame on myself?' she said to herself, and began again from the beginning. `He's truthful, he's honest, he loves me. I love him, and in a few days the divorce will come. What more do I want? I want peace of mind and trust, and I will take the blame on myself. Yes, now when he comes in, I will tell him I was wrong, though I was not wrong, and we will go away.'

And to escape thinking any more, and being overcome by irritability, she rang and ordered the boxes to be brought up for packing their things for the country.

At ten o'clock Vronsky came in.