hedges. The whole, with its park, is much like a very much magnified with rococo additions in furniture, hedges, terraces, and statues. Now I am going for a walk.

A FATAL STEP.1

BY COUNT TOLSTOI.

(From "Anna Karénina": translated by Nathan Haskell Dole.)

[COUNT LYOFF NIKOLAIEVICH TOLSTOI, the most eminent living Russian novelist, was born in a little village in the government of Tula, and is descended in a direct line from a nobleman who was a companion and trusted agent of Peter the Great. After a course of study at the University of Kazan he entered the army, and served in the Caucasus and at Sebastopol. He resigned at the close of the Crimean War, and since 1862 has lived on his estates near Moscow, dividing his time between literary work and the care of his property. "War and Peace" (1865-1868) and "Anna Karénina are his most important novels. Among his other works are: "Sebastopol," "The Cossacks," "Ivan Ilyitch," "My Confession," "The Kreutzer Sonata," and "Master and Man."]

WHEN Kitty heard of Anna's call, she had not wished to appear; but Dolly reasoned with her, and she finally controlled her repugnance and went to the parlor. She blushed as she approached Anna, and held out her hand.

"I am very glad," said she, in a low voice.

Kitty was constrained between her dislike of this wicked woman and her desire to be polite to her; but as soon as she saw Anna's beautiful, sympathetic face, all her prejudice vanished.

"I should have thought it quite natural if you had refused to see me I am used to everything," said Anna. "You have been very ill yes, you have changed."

Kitty thought that Anna looked at her with dislike, and she attributed her unfriendliness to the unpleasant position in which she stood in regard to herself. Her heart was filled with compassion.

They talked of Kitty's illness, of her child, and of Stiva; but Anna was evidently absent-minded.

rose.

"I came to bid you good-by," she said to Dolly, as she

"When do you go?"

1 Copyright, 1886, by T. Y. Crowell & Co. Used by permission.

Without answering her, Anna turned with a smile to Kitty. "I am very glad to see you again, I've heard so much about you from every one, and especially from your husband. He came to see me, and I liked him very much," she added with a wicked emphasis. "Where is he?"

"He has gone to the country," answered Kitty, blushing. "Give my love to him: now, don't forget!"

"I will do it, certainly," said Kitty, simply, with a compassionate look.

"So good-by, Dolly," said Anna, kissing her; and shaking hands with Kitty, she hastened away.

"And

"She is as fascinating as ever," remarked Kitty to her sister, when Dolly came in after going to the door with Anna. how beautiful she is! But there is something very painful about her, terribly painful."

"She doesn't seem to be in her usual state to-day. I thought she came near bursting into tears in the anteroom." Anna took her seat in the carriage, and went home more unhappy than ever. Her interview with Kitty awakened the consciousness of her own moral depravity, and the pain of this she felt in addition to her former sufferings.

"Where shall I drive you? Home?" asked Piotr.

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Yes, home," she replied, scarcely knowing what she said. They looked upon me as some strange, incomprehensible creature. What can that man be saying so eagerly to the other?" thought she, seeing two passers-by talking together. "Is it possible to say what one really feels? I wanted to confess to Dolly, and I am glad that I kept still. How she would have rejoiced at my unhappiness! She would have tried to hide it, but at heart she would have been glad: she would have thought it just that I should pay for that happiness which she begrudged me. And Kitty would have been still more pleased. How I read her through and through! She knows her husband liked me uncommonly well, and she is jealous, and hates me; and, what's more, she despises me. In her eyes, I am an immoral woman. If I had been what she thinks, how easily I could have turned her husband's head if I had wanted to! I confess I thought of it. There goes a man who is delighted with his own looks," she said to herself, as a tall, florid man went by, and, mistaking her for an acquaintance, lifted his shiny hat from his shiny bald head. "He thought he knew me! He knows me quite as well as anybody in the world

knows me. I don't know myself: I only know my appetites, as the French say. They covet some of that bad ice cream," she said to herself, as she watched two little street children standing in front of a vender, who had just set down from his head his tub of ice cream, and was wiping his face with a corner of his coat. "We all want our sweet delicacies; if not sugar plums, then bad ice cream, just like Kitty, who, not catching Vronsky, took Levin. She envies me, she hates me; and we hate each other. So goes the world. Tiutkin coiffeur -Je me fais coiffer ["I will have my hair dressed"] par Tiutkin. -I will tell him this nonsense when he comes," thought she, and smiled, and then instantly remembered that there was no one now to whom she could tell amusing things. "There is nothing amusing, nothing gay: it is all disgusting. The vesper bell is ringing, and that storekeeper is crossing himself so quickly that one would think he was afraid of losing the chance.

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Why these churches, these bells, these lies? Just to hide the fact that we all hate each other, like those izvoshchiks who are swearing at each other so angrily. Yashvin was right when he said, ' He is after my shirt, and I am after his.'

She was so engrossed by these thoughts that she forgot her grief for a while, and was surprised when the carriage stopped in front of her house. The sight of the Swiss, coming to meet her, reminded her that she had sent a letter and a telegram. "Is there an answer yet?"

"I will go and see," said the Swiss; and he came back in a moment with a telegram in a thin square envelope. Anna read:

I cannot be back before ten o'clock.

"And has the messenger come back?"

"Not yet," replied the Swiss.

VRONSKY.

"Ah! if that is so, then I know what I must do ;" and feeling a vague sense of anger and a desire for vengeance arising in her soul, she ran upstairs.

"I myself will go and find him," thought she. "Before I go away forever, I will show him what he has done. I never hated any one as I hate this man!" And when she caught sight of Vronsky's hat hanging in the anteroom, she shivered with aversion. She did not reflect that the dispatch was in answer to her telegram, and that he could not have yet received