Betsy shouted “Stay! Stay in place!” Others of the party joined in-“Stay!” “Stay, robot!” “Remain where you are!”-and Marionetta did so.

“What?” Vronsky repeated to Anna, who was only half-listening, watching the progress of the “game” with horrified fascination. “What is it they write to you?

“I often think men have no understanding of what’s not honorable though they’re always talking of it,” Anna replied sharply.

“I don’t quite understand the meaning of your words,” Vronsky said. The bolt-shot jammed, the ambassador’s wife shrugged, and the fusillade ceased; Anna, assuming that the cruel sport was over, turned her full attention to Alexei Kirillovich. “I have been wanting to tell you,” she said to him, “You behaved wrongly, very wrongly.”

“Do you suppose I don’t know that I’ve acted wrongly?” he replied. “But who was the cause of my doing so?”

“What do you say that to me for?” she said, glancing severely at him.

“You know what I say these things for,” Vronsky answered boldly and joyfully, meeting her glance and not dropping his eyes.

“That only shows you have no heart,” said Anna to Vronsky, but her eyes said that she knew he had a heart, and that was why she was afraid of him.

“Ah! There we are!” said the ambassador’s wife, and a new fusillade sung out from the device, its full force this time striking Marionetta’s leg; the robot cried out in alarm at the fresh round of pain.

“What you spoke of just now was a mistake, and not love.”

“Remember that I have forbidden you to utter that word, that hateful word,” said Anna with a shudder, overcome both by the conversation and the wash of empathy she was experiencing meanwhile for this poor decom; she reached out for Android Karenina’s hand to steady herself. “I have long meant to tell you this! I’ve come on purpose this evening, knowing I should meet you. I have come to tell you that this must end. I have never blushed before anyone, and you force me to feel to blame for something.”

He looked at her and was struck by a new spiritual beauty in her face. “I…,” he began, but Anna interrupted: “I can’t abide this any longer!” And, dropping Android Karenina’s hand, she herself jumped in front of the reverberating bolt-shots, protecting Marionetta’s body with her own, and hollering into the robot’s face: “Move, Move! Move, Marionetta! You may move!”

The robot danced away, the ambassador’s wife stopped shooting, and the room was suddenly terribly silent and still, as everyone grasped what had happened; the game was over, and Anna was hurt. She clutched at her leg, rolled onto her back and grimaced in pain.

“I didn’t… it was not my intention…” stammered Princess Betsy, while Count Vronsky rushed to Anna Arkadyevna’s side, crouched over her, quickly and expertly cutting off her boot with his crackle dagger and examining the electrical burn. At the same time, Android Karenina crouched over Marionetta, running her hands along the body of the other robot, enacting a dozen small solderings, activating the other bot’s self-repair mechanisms. The rest of the partygoers milled about, discussing in low voices the singular event they had witnessed-a human interceding, even placing herself in danger, to save a robot!

While Vronsky tended to Anna’s wound he whispered desperately in her ear, “What do you wish of me?”

“I want you to go to Moscow and ask for Kitty’s forgiveness,” she said.

“You don’t wish that?” he said.

He saw she was saying what she forced herself to say, not what she wanted to say.

“If you love me, as you say,” she whispered, “do so that I may be at peace.”

His face grew radiant.

“Don’t you know that you’re all my life to me? But I know no peace, and I can’t give it to you. All myself-and love… yes. I can’t think of you and myself apart. You and I are one to me. And I see no chance before us of peace for me or for you. I see a chance of despair, of wretchedness… or I see a chance of bliss, what bliss!… Can it be there’s no chance of it?” he murmured with his lips; but she heard.

She strained every effort of her mind to say what ought to be said. But instead of that she let her eyes rest on him, full of love, and made no answer.

It’s come! he thought in ecstasy. When I was beginning to despair, and it seemed there would be no end-it’s come! She loves me! She owns it!

“Then do this for me: never say such things to me, and let us be friends,” she said in words; but her eyes spoke quite differently.

“Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the happiest or the most wretched of people-that’s in your hands.”

She would have said something, but he interrupted her.

“I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do,” he said as he tied off his handkerchief and smoothed down the hem of her dress over the tidy makeshift bandage. “But if even that cannot be, command me to disappear, and I shall disappear. You shall not see me if my presence is distasteful to you.”

“I don’t want to drive you away.”

“Only don’t change anything, leave everything as it is,” he said in a shaky voice. “Here’s your husband.”

At that instant Alexei Alexandrovich did in fact walk into the room with his calm, awkward gait, his robotic right eye turning slowly in his head, scanning everyone in all corners of the room. Lupo, who had been curled up in the corner, waiting loyally for his master to conclude his conversation, slunk hurriedly away.

Glancing at his wife and Vronsky, Alexei Alexandrovich went up to the lady of the house, and sitting down for a cup of tea, began talking in his deliberate, always audible voice, in his habitual tone of banter, laced with menace.

“Your Rambouillet is in full conclave,” he said, looking round at all the party, “the graces and the muses.”

But Princess Betsy could not endure that tone of his-“sneering,” as she called it, using the English word, and like a skillful hostess she at once brought him into a serious conversation on the subject of universal conscription. Alexei Alexandrovich was immediately interested in the subject, and began seriously defending the Ministry’s latest decree against Princess Betsy, who had attacked it.

Vronsky and Anna still sat at the little table.

“This is indecorous,” whispered one lady, with an expressive glance at Madame Karenina, Vronsky, and her husband.

“What did I tell you?” said Anna’s friend.

Not only those ladies, but almost everyone in the room, even Princess Myakaya and Betsy herself, looked several times in the direction of these two, withdrawn from the general circle, as though that were a disturbing fact. Alexei Alexandrovich was the only person who did not once look in that direction, having entered into an interesting discussion elsewhere in the room.

Noticing the disagreeable impression that was being made on everyone, Princess Betsy slipped someone else into her place to listen to Alexei Alexandrovich, and went up to Anna.

“I’m always amazed at the clearness and precision of your husband’s language,” she said.

“Oh, yes!” said Anna. She crossed over to the big table and took part in the general conversation.

Alexei Alexandrovich, after staying half an hour, went up to his wife and suggested that they should go home together. But she answered, not looking at him, that she was staying for supper. Alexei Alexandrovich made his bows and withdrew.

After supper, Madame Karenina at last excused herself, and found her streamlined II/Coachman/47-T outside, chilled with the cold. A II/Footman/C(c)43 stood opening the carriage door. The II/Porter/7e62 stood holding open the great door of the house. Android Karenina, with her dexterous metal fingers, was unfastening the lace of her mistress’s sleeve caught in the hook of her fur cloak, and averting her faceplate while, with bent head, Anna listened to the words Vronsky murmured as he escorted her down.