answer: "What were the children to put
on for their walk? Should they have any milk? Should not a new
cook be sent for?"

"Ah, let me alone, let me alone!" she said, and going back to her
bedroom she sat down in the same place as she had sat when
talking to her husband, clasping tightly her thin hands with the
rings that slipped down on her bony fingers, and fell to going
over in her memory all the conversation. "He has gone! But has
he broken it off with her?" she thought. "Can it be he sees her?
Why didn't I ask him! No, no, reconciliation is impossible.
Even if we remain in the same house, we are strangers--strangers
forever!" She repeated again with special significance the word
so dreadful to her. "And how I loved him! my God, how I loved
him!.... How I loved him! And now don't I love him? Don't I
love him more than before? The most horrible thing is," she
began, but did not finish her thought, because Matrona
Philimonovna put her head in at the door.

"Let us send for my brother," she said; "he can get a dinner
anyway, or we shall have the children getting nothing to eat till
six again, like yesterday."

"Very well, I will come directly and see about it. But did you
send for some new milk?"

And Darya Alexandrovna plunged into the duties of the day, and
drowned her grief in them for a time.

Chapter 5

Stepan Arkadyevitch had learned easily at school, thanks to his
excellent abilities, but he had been idle and mischievous, and
therefore was one of the lowest in his class. But in spite of
his habitually dissipated mode of life, his inferior grade in the
service, and his comparative youth, he occupied the honorable and
lucrative position of president of one of the government boards
at Moscow. This post he had received through his sister Anna's
husband, Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin, who held one of the most
important positions in the ministry to whose department the
Moscow office belonged. But if Karenin had not got his brother-
in-law this berth, then through a hundred other personages--
brothers, sisters, cousins, uncles, and aunts--Stiva Oblonsky
would have received this post, or some other similar one,
together with the salary of six thousand absolutely needful for
him, as his affairs, in spite of his wife's considerable
property, were in an embarrassed condition.

Half Moscow and Petersburg were friends and relations of Stepan
Arkadyevitch. He was born in the midst of those w