"Yes, altogether," thought Darya Alexandrovna, looking back over her whole existence during those fifteen years of her married life, "pregnancy, sickness, mental incapacity, indifference to everything, and most of all--hideousness.

Kitty, young and pretty as she is, even Kitty has lost her looks; and I when I'm with child become hideous, I know it.

The birth, the agony, the hideous agonies, that last moment...then the nursing, the sleepless nights, the fearful pains....

" Darya Alexandrovna shuddered at the mere recollection of the pain from sore breasts which she had suffered with almost every child.