Darya Alexandrovna, sitting erect on a chair, turned her head, following Anna with a face of sympathetic suffering.

“You ought to make the attempt,” she said softly.

“Suppose I make the attempt. What does it mean?” she said, evidently giving utterance to a thought, a thousand times thought over and learned by heart. “It means that I, hating him, but still recognizing that I have wronged him⁠—and I consider him magnanimous⁠—that I humiliate myself to write to him.⁠ ⁠… Well, suppose I make the effort; I do it. Either I receive a humiliating refusal or consent.⁠ ⁠… Well, I have received his consent, say.⁠ ⁠…” Anna was at that moment at the furthest end of the room, and she stopped there, doing something to the curtain at the window. “I receive his consent, but my⁠ ⁠… my son? They won’t give him up to me. He will grow up despising me, with his father, whom I’ve abandoned. Do you see, I love⁠ ⁠… equally, I think, but both more than myself⁠—two creatures, Seryozha and Alexey.”