,” she read. A man bowed to her. It was Annushka’s husband. “Our parasites”; she remembered how Vronsky had said that. “Our? Why our? What’s so awful is that one can’t tear up the past by its roots. One can’t tear it out, but one can hide one’s memory of it. And I’ll hide it.” And then she thought of her past with Alexey Alexandrovitch, of how she had blotted the memory of it out of her life. “Dolly will think I’m leaving my second husband, and so I certainly must be in the wrong. As if I cared to be right! I can’t help it!” she said, and she wanted to cry. But at once she fell to wondering what those two girls could be smiling about. “Love, most likely. They don’t know how dreary it is, how low.⁠ ⁠… The boulevard and the children. Three boys running, playing at horses. Seryozha! And I’m losing everything and not getting him back. Yes, I’m losing everything, if he doesn’t return. Perhaps he was late for the train and has come back by now. Longing for humiliation again!” she said to herself. “No, I’ll go to Dolly, and say straight out to her, I’m unhappy, I deserve this, I’m to blame, but still I’m unhappy, help me. These horses, this carriage⁠—how loathsome I am to myself in this carriage⁠—all his; but I won’t see them again.”