All Anna's feelings at this crisis of her fate are depicted with the deepest truth and tragedy. The unhappy creature herself knows whither she is tending, and struggles frantically, but her views of life grow ever more and more gloomy; hatred of herself, hatred of her lover, well up in her heart, and, at last, her only desire is to punish him. "'There,' she said, looking at the shadow of the carriage thrown upon the black coal-dust which covered the sleepers, 'there, in the centre, he will be punished and I shall be delivered from it all ... and from myself.' "Her little red travelling-bag caused her to miss the moment when she could throw herself under the wheels of the first carriage, as she was unable to detach it from her arm. She awaited the second. A feeling like that she had once experienced just before taking a dive in the river came over her, and she made the sign of the cross. This familiar action awakened in her soul a crowd of memories of youth and childhood. Life, with its elusive joys, glowed for an instant before her, but she did not remove her eyes from the carriage, and when the centre part, between the wheels, appeared, she threw away her red bag, lowered her head upon her shoulders, and, with outstretched hands, threw herself on her knees beneath the vehicle, as though prepared to rise again. She had time to feel afraid. 'Where am I? What am I doing? Why?' thought she, trying {59} to draw back; but a great inflexible mass struck her head and threw her on her back. 'Lord! forgive me all,' she murmured, feeling the struggle to be in vain. A little muzhik, who was mumbling in his beard, leant from the step of the carriage on to the line. "And the light--which, for the unfortunate one, had lit up the book of life with its troubles, its deceptions, and its pains--rending the darkness, shone with greater brightness, then flickered, grew faint, and went out for ever." On Vronsky the terrible punishment takes effect; he rejoins the service a crushed and broken man, having henceforward only one desire--to lose his life in battle. Mingled with the main story of Anna and Vronsky is the companion one or "under-plot" of Kitty Shcherbatsky and Konstantin Levin. We may notice that Tolstoy's method of construction differs essentially from that of Turgénief; Turgénief, making his work briefer and more concentrated, omits all that is not essential to his main theme, but Tolstoy aims at giving, not so much the drama of life as life itself. He wishes to show us the slow, deliberate motion of reality, and when in Anna's life there are no events, he fills up the space with the acts and experiences of his other characters.