the children for their walk? should they give them milk? should they send for another cook?
"Akh! leave me alone, leave me alone!" she cried, and, hastening back to the chamber, she sat down in the place where she had been talking with her husband. Then, clasping her thin hands, on whose fingers the rings would scarcely stay, she reviewed the whole conversation.
"He has gone! But has he broken with her?" she asked herself. "Does he still continue to see her? Why did n't I ask him? No, no, we cannot live together. Even if we continue to live in the same house, we are only strangers, strangers forever!" she repeated, with a strong emphasis on the word that hurt her so cruelly. "How I loved him! my God, how I loved him!.... How I loved him! and even now do I not love him? Do I not love him even more than before? that is the most terrible thing," she was beginning to say, but she did not finish out her thought, because Matriona Filimonovna put her head in at the door. "Give orders to send for my brother," said she; "he will get dinner. If you don't, it will be like yesterday, when the children did not have anything to eat for six hours."
"Very good, I will come and give the order. Have you sent for some fresh milk?"
And Darya Aleksandrovna entered into her daily tasks, and in them forgot her sorrow for the time being.
CHAPTER V
Stepan Arkadyevitch had done well at school, by reason of his excellent natural gifts, but he was lazy and mischievous, and consequently had been at the foot of his class; but, in spite of his irregular habits, his low rank in the Service, and his youth, he, nevertheless, held an important salaried position as nachalnik, or president of one of the courts in Moscow. This place he had secured through the good offices of his sister Anna's husband, Alekseï Aleksandrovitch Karenin, who occupied one of the most influential positions in the ministry of which he
