she was melancholy, depressed. Something must have happened to her in
Moscow--what, I could never guess. But on the other hand, on that fatal day
she seemed as it were ... if not more cheerful, at least more serene than
usual. Even I had no presentiment,' added Anna with a bitter smile, as
though reproaching herself for it.

'You see,' she began again, 'it seemed as though at Katia's birth it had
been decreed that she was to be unhappy. From her early years she was
convinced of it. She would lean her head on her hand, sink into thought,
and say, "I shall not live long!" She used to have presentiments. Imagine!
she used to see beforehand, sometimes in a dream and sometimes awake, what
was going to happen to her! "If I can't live as I want to live, then I
won't live,"... was a saying of hers too.... "Our life's in our own hands,
you know." And she proved that!'

Anna hid her face in her hands and stopped speaking. 'Anna Semyonovna,'
Aratov began after a short pause, 'you have perhaps heard to what the
newspapers ascribed ... "To an unhappy love affair?"' Anna broke in,
at once pulling away her hands from her face. 'That's a slander, a
fabrication!... My pure, unapproachable Katia ... Katia!... and unhappy,
unrequited love? And shouldn't I have known of it?... Every one was in love
with her ... while she ... And whom could she have fallen in love with
here? Who among all the people here, who was worthy of her? Who was up to
the standard of honesty, truth, purity ... yes, above all, of purity which
she, with all her faults, always held up as an ideal before her?... She
repulsed!... she!...'

Anna's voice broke.... Her fingers were trembling. All at once she flushed
crimson ... crimson with indignation, and for that instant, and that
instant only, she was like her sister.