"The girls are all right," she thought; "but the boys?" "It's very well that I'm teaching Grisha, but of course that's only because I am free myself now, I'm not with child.

Stiva, of course, there's no counting on.

And with the help of good-natured friends I can bring them up; but if there's another baby coming?..." And the thought struck her how untruly it was said that the curse laid on woman was that in sorrow she should bring forth children.

"The birth itself, that's nothing; but the months of carrying the child--that's what's so intolerable," she thought, picturing to herself her last pregnancy, and the death of the last baby.

And she recalled the conversation she had just had with the young woman at the inn.