The little red handbag

Anna boards the 8.02 and takes a corner of an empty compartment. A grimy misshapen peasant in a cap stoops over the carriage wheels outside her window, and remembering her dream she moves, trembling. A husband and wife get in and talk insincere French for her benefit; she sees they hate each other. The wife says reason was given to man to escape his troubles, which answers Anna's thought: why not put out the candle if there is nothing more to look at. At Obiralovka she gets out shunning the crowd, cannot remember why she came, and asks a porter after Count Vronsky's coachman — someone from there was just here to meet the Princess Sorokina. Michael hands her the note: 'Very sorry the note did not catch me. I shall be back at ten.' Walking to the end of the platform as a goods train comes in, she remembers the man run over the day she first met Vronsky. Her little red handbag makes her misjudge the first truck; she crosses herself, childhood memories break the darkness, and she throws the bag away and goes under the second, horror-struck too late. The candle flares, flickers and goes out.

Everything planted since Part One arrives at once: the crushed watchman, the peasant with the iron, the candle and the book. Tolstoy refuses any grandeur in the act — the handbag makes her miss the first truck, and she changes her mind a second too late. The novel's heroine dies eight chapters before it ends, and the last image is a reading-lamp going out.