“No, wait a minute, please. I must tell you...no, you.” she turned to Alexey Alexandrovitch, and her neck and brow were suffused with crimson. “I won’t and can’t keep anything secret from you,” she said.

Alexey Alexandrovitch cracked his fingers and bowed his head.

“Betsy’s been telling me that Count Vronsky wants to come here to say good-bye before his departure for Tashkend.” She did not look at her husband, and was evidently in haste to have everything out, however hard it might be for her. “I told her I could not receive him.”

“You said, my dear, that it would depend on Alexey Alexandrovitch,” Betsy corrected her.

“Oh, no, I can’t receive him; and what object would there....”