Anna Arkadyevna read and understood, but it was distasteful to her to read, that is, to follow the reflection of other people's lives.

She had too great a desire to live herself.

If she read that the heroine of the novel was nursing a sick man, she longed to move with noiseless steps about the room of a sick man; if she read of a member of Parliament making a speech, she longed to be delivering the speech; if she read of how Lady Mary had ridden after the hounds, and had provoked her sister-in-law, and had surprised everyone by her boldness, she too wished to be doing the same.