Anna Karenina | Leo Tolstoy

[shirin71]

Chapter 26
Never before had a day been passed in quarrel. Today
was the first time. And this was not a quarrel. It was the
open acknowledgment of complete coldness. Was it
possible to glance at her as he had glanced when he came
into the room for the guarantee?—to look at her, see her
heart was breaking with despair, and go out without a
word with that face of callous composure? He was not
merely cold to her, he hated her because he loved another
woman—that was clear.
And remembering all the cruel words he had said,
Anna supplied, too, the words that he had unmistakably
wished to say and could have said to her, and she grew
more and more exasperated.
‘I won’t prevent you,’ he might say. ‘You can go
where you like. You were unwilling to be divorced from
your husband, no doubt so that you might go back to
him. Go back to him. If you want money, I’ll give it to
you. How many roubles do you want?’
All the most cruel words that a brutal man could say,
he said to her in her imagination, and she could not
forgive him for them, as though he had actually said them.
‘But didn’t he only yesterday swear he loved me, he, a
truthful and sincere man? Haven’t I despaired for nothing
many times already?’ she said to herself afterwards.
All that day, except for the visit to Wilson’s, which
occupied two hours, Anna spent in doubts whether
everything were over or whether there were still hope of
reconciliation, whether she should go away at once or see
him once more. She was expecting him the whole day,
and in the evening, as she went to her own room, leaving
a message for him that her head ached, she said to herself,
‘If he comes in spite of what the maid says, it means that
he loves me still. If not, it means that all is over, and then I
will decide what I’m to do!..’
In the evening she heard the rumbling of his carriage
stop at the entrance, his ring, his steps and his conversation
with the servant; he believed what was told him, did not
care to find out more, and went to his own room. So then
everything was over.
And death rose clearly and vividly before her mind as
the sole means of bringing back love for her in his heart,
of punishing him and of gaining the victory in that strife
which the evil spirit in possession of her heart was waging
with him.
Now nothing mattered: going or not going to
Vozdvizhenskoe, getting or not getting a divorce from her
husband—all that did not matter. The one thing that
mattered was punishing him. When she poured herself out
her usual dose of opium, and thought that she had only to
drink off the whole bottle to die, it seemed to her so
simple and easy, that she began musing with enjoyment on
how he would suffer, and repent and love her memory
when it would be too late. She lay in bed with open eyes,
by the light of a single burned-down candle, gazing at the
carved cornice of the ceiling and at the shadow of the
screen that covered part of it, while she vividly pictured to
herself how he would feel when she would be no more,
when she would be only a memory to him. ‘How could I
say such cruel things to her?’ he would say. ‘How could I
go out of the room without saying anything to her? But
now she is no more. She has gone away from us forever.
She is....’ Suddenly the shadow of the screen wavered,
pounced on the whole cornice, the whole ceiling; other
shadows from the other side swooped to meet it, for an
instant the shadows flitted back, but then with fresh
swiftness they darted forward, wavered, commingled, and
all was darkness. ‘Death!’ she thought. And such horror
came upon her that for a long while she could not realize
where she was, and for a long while her trembling hands
could not find the matches and light another candle,
instead of the one that had burned down and gone out.
‘No, anything—only to live! Why, I love him! Why, he
loves me! This has been before and will pass,’ she said,
feeling that tears of joy at the return to life were trickling
down her cheeks. And to escape from her panic she went
hurriedly to his room.
He was asleep there, and sleeping soundly. She went up
to him, and holding the light above his face, she gazed a
long while at him. Now when he was asleep, she loved
him so that at the sight of him she could not keep back
tears of tenderness. But she knew that if he waked up he
would look at her with cold eyes, convinced that he was
right, and that before telling him of her love, she would
have to prove to him that he had been wrong in his
treatment of her. Without waking him, she went back,
and after a second dose of opium she fell towards morning
into a heavy, incomplete sleep, during which she never
quite lost consciousness.
In the morning she was waked by a horrible nightmare,
which had recurred several times in her dreams, even
before her connection with Vronsky. A little old man with
unkempt beard was doing something bent down over
some iron, muttering meaningless French words, and she,
as she always did in this nightmare (it was what made the
horror of it), felt that this peasant was taking no notice of
her, but was doing something horrible with the iron—
over her. And she waked up in a cold sweat.
When she got up, the previous day came back to her as
though veiled in mist.
‘There was a quarrel. Just what has happened several
times. I said I had a headache, and he did not come in to
see me. Tomorrow we’re going away; I must see him and
get ready for the journey,’ she said to herself. And learning
that he was in his study, she went down to him. As she
passed through the drawing room she heard a carriage stop
at the entrance, and looking out of the window she saw
the carriage, from which a young girl in a lilac hat was
leaning out giving some direction to the footman ringing
the bell. After a parley in the hall, someone came upstairs,
and Vronsky’s steps could be heard passing the drawing
room. He went rapidly downstairs. Anna went again to
the window. She saw him come out onto the steps
without his hat and go up to the carriage. The young girl
in the lilac hat handed him a parcel. Vronsky, smiling, said
something to her. The carriage drove away, he ran rapidly
upstairs again.
The mists that had shrouded everything in her soul
parted suddenly. The feelings of yesterday pierced the sick
heart with a fresh pang. She could not understand now
how she could have lowered herself by spending a whole
day with him in his house. she went into his room to
announce her determination.
‘That was Madame Sorokina and her daughter. They
came and brought me the money and the deeds from
maman. I couldn’t get them yesterday. How is your head,
better?’ he said quietly, not wishing to see and to
understand the gloomy and solemn expression of her face.
She looked silently, intently at him, standing in the
middle of the room. He glanced at her, frowned for a
moment, and went on reading a letter. She turned, and
went deliberately out of the room. He still might have
turned her back, but she had reached the door, he was still
silent, and the only sound audible was the rustling of the
note paper as he turned it.
‘Oh, by the way,’ he said at the very moment she was
in the doorway, ‘we’re going tomorrow for certain, aren’t
we?’
‘You, but not I,’ she said, turning round to him.
‘Anna, we can’t go on like this..’
‘You, but not I,’ she repeated.

‘This is getting unbearable!’
‘You...you will be sorry for this,’ she said, and went
out.
Frightened by the desperate expression with which
these words were uttered, he jumped up and would have
run after her, but on second thoughts he sat down and
scowled, setting his teeth. This vulgar—as he thought it—
threat of something vague exasperated him. ‘I’ve tried
everything,’ he thought; ‘the only thing left is not to pay
attention,’ and he began to get ready to drive into town,
and again to his mother’s to get her signature to the deeds.
She heard the sound of his steps about the study and
the dining room. At the drawing room he stood still. But
he did not turn in to see her, he merely gave an order that
the horse should be given to Voytov if he came while he
was away. Then she heard the carriage brought round, the
door opened, and he came out again. But he went back
into the porch again, and someone was running upstairs. It
was the valet running up for his gloves that had been
forgotten. She went to the window and saw him take the
gloves without looking, and touching the coachman on
the back he said something to him. Then without looking
up at the window he settled himself in his usual attitude in
the carriage, with his legs crossed, and drawing on his
gloves he vanished round the corner.
Chapter 27
‘He has gone! It is over!’ Anna said to herself, standing
at the window; and in answer to this statement the
impression of the darkness when the candle had flickered
out, and of her fearful dream mingling into one, filled her
heart with cold terror.
‘No, that cannot be!’ she cried, and crossing the room
she rang the bell. She was so afraid now of being alone,
that without waiting for the servant to come in, she went
out to meet him.
‘Iquire where the count has gone,’ she said. The
servant answered that the count had gone to the stable.
‘His honor left word that if you cared to drive out, the
carriage would be back immediately.’
‘Very good. Wait a minute. I’ll write a note at once.
Send Mihail with the note to the stables. Make haste.’
She sat down and wrote:
‘I was wrong. Come back home; I must explain. For
God’s sake come! I’m afraid.’
She sealed it up and gave it to the servant.
She was afraid of being left alone now; she followed the
servant out of the room, and went to the nursery.
‘Why, this isn’t it, this isn’t he! Where are his blue
eyes, his sweet, shy smile?’ was her first thought when she
saw her chubby rosy little girl with her black, curly hair
instead of Seryozha, whom in the tangle of her ideas she
had expected to see in the nursery. The little girl sitting at
the table was obstinately and violently battering on it with
a cork, and staring aimlessly at her mother with her pitchblack
eyes. Answering the English nurse that she was quite
well, and that she was going to the country tomorrow,
Anna sat down by the little girl and began spinning the
cork to show her. But the child’s loud, ringing laugh, and
the motion of her eyebrows, recalled Vronsky so vividly
that she got up hurriedly, restraining her sobs, and went
away. ‘Can it be all over? No, it cannot be!’ she thought.
‘He will come back. But how can he explain that smile,
that excitement after he had been talking to her? But even
if he doesn’t explain, I will believe. If I don’t believe,
there’s only one thing left for me, and I can’t.’
She looked at her watch. Twenty minutes had passed.
‘By now he has received the note and is coming back. Not
long, ten minutes more.... But what if he doesn’t come?
No, that cannot be. He mustn’t see me with tear-stained
eyes. I’ll go and wash. Yes, yes; did I do my hair or not?’
she asked herself. And she could not remember. She felt
her head with her hand. ‘Yes, my hair has been done, but
when I did it I can’t in the least remember.’ She could not
believe the evidence of her hand, and went up to the pier
glass to see whether she really had done her hair. She
certainly had, but she could not think when she had done
it. ‘Who’s that?’ she thought, looking in the looking glass
at the swollen face with strangely glittering eyes, that
looked in a scared way at her. ‘Why, it’s I!’ she suddenly
understood, and looking round, she seemed all at once to
feel his kisses on her, and twitched her shoulders,
shuddering. Then she lifted her hand to her lips and kissed
it.
‘What is it? Why, I’m going out of my mind!’ and she
went into her bedroom, where Annushka was tidying the
room.
‘Annushka,’ she said, coming to a standstill before her,
and she stared at the maid, not knowing what to say to
her.
‘You meant to go and see Darya Alexandrovna,’ said
the girl, as though she understood.
‘Darya Alexandrovna? Yes, I’ll go.’
‘Fifteen minutes there, fifteen minutes back. He’s
coming, he’ll be here soon.’ She took out her watch and
looked at it. ‘But how could he go away, leaving me in
such a state? How can he live, without making it up with
me?’ She went to the window and began looking into the
street. Judging by the time, he might be back now. But
her calculations might be wrong, and she began once
more to recall when he had started and to count the
minutes.
At the moment when she had moved away to the big
clock to compare it with her watch, someone drove up.
Glancing out of the window, she saw his carriage. But no
one came upstairs, and voices could be heard below. It
was the messenger who had come back in the carriage.
She went down to him.
‘We didn’t catch the count. The count had driven off
on the lower city road.’
‘What do you say? What!...’ she said to the rosy, goodhumored
Mihail, as he handed her back her note.
‘Why, then, he has never received it!’ she thought.
‘Go with this note to Countess Vronskaya’s place, you
know? and bring an answer back immediately,’ she said to
the messenger.
‘And I, what am I going to do?’ she thought. ‘Yes, I’m
going to Dolly’s, that’s true or else I shall go out of my
mind. Yes, and I can telegraph, too.’ And she wrote a
telegram. ‘I absolutely must talk to you; come at once.’
After sending off the telegram, she went to dress. When
she was dressed and in her hat, she glanced again into the
eyes of the plump, comfortable-looking Annushka. There
was unmistakable sympathy in those good-natured little
gray eyes.
‘Annushka, dear, what am I to do?’ said Anna, sobbing
and sinking helplessly into a chair.
‘Why fret yourself so, Anna Arkadyevna? Why, there’s
nothing out of the way. You drive out a little, and it’ll
cheer you up,’ said the maid.
‘Yes, I’m going,’ said Anna, rousing herself and getting
up. ‘And if there’s a telegram while I’m away, send it on
to Darya Alexandrovna’s...but no, I shall be back myself.’
‘Yes, I mustn’t think, I must do something, drive
somewhere, and most of all, get out of this house,’ she
said, feeling with terror the strange turmoil going on in
her own heart, and she made haste to go out and get into
the carriage.
‘Where to?’ asked Pyotr before getting onto the bow
‘To Znamenka, the Oblonskys’.’
Chapter 28
It was bright and sunny. A fine rain had been falling all
the morning, and now it had not long cleared up. The
iron roofs, the flags of the roads, the flints of the
pavements, the wheels and leather, the brass and the
tinplate of the carriages—all glistened brightly in the May
sunshine. It was three o’clock, and the very liveliest time
in the streets.
As she sat in a corner of the comfortable carriage, that
hardly swayed on its supple springs, while the grays trotted
swiftly, in the midst of the unceasing rattle of wheels and
the changing impressions in the pure air, Anna ran over
the events of the last days, and she saw her position quite
differently from how it had seemed at home. Now the
thought of death seemed no longer so terrible and so clear
to her, and death itself no longer seemed so inevitable.
Now she blamed herself for the humiliation to which she
had lowered herself. ‘I entreat him to forgive me. I have
given in to him. I have owned myself in fault. What for?
Can’t I live without him?’ And leaving unanswered the
question how she was going to live without him, she fell
to reading the signs on the shops. ‘Office and warehouse.
Dental surgeon. Yes, I’ll tell Dolly all about it. She doesn’t
like Vronsky. I shall be sick and ashamed, but I’ll tell her.
She loves me, and I’ll follow her advice. I won’t give in to
him; I won’t let him train me as he pleases. Filippov, bun
shop. They say they send their dough to Petersburg. The
Moscow water is so good for it. Ah, the springs at
Mitishtchen, and the pancakes!’
And she remembered how, long, long ago, when she
was a girl of seventeen, she had gone with her aunt to
Troitsa. ‘Riding, too. Was that really me, with red hands?
How much that seemed to me then splendid and out of
reach has become worthless, while what I had then has
gone out of my reach forever! Could I ever have believed
then that I could come to such humiliation? How
conceited and self-satisfied he will be when he gets my
note! But I will show him.... How horrid that paint smells!
Why is it they’re always painting and building? Modes et
robes,’ she read. A man bowed to her. It was Annushka’s
husband. ‘Our parasites"; she remembered how Vronsky
had said that. ‘Our? Why our? What’s so awful is that one
can’t tear up the past by its roots. One can’t tear it out, but
one can hide one’s memory of it. And I’ll hide it.’ And
then she thought of her past with Alexey Alexandrovitch,
of how she had blotted the memory of it out of her life.
‘Dolly will think I’m leaving my second husband, and so I
certainly must be in the wrong. As if I cared to be right! I
can’t help it!’ she said, and she wanted to cry. But at once
she fell to wondering what those two girls could be
smiling about. ‘Love, most likely. They don’t know how
dreary it is, how low.... The boulevard and the children.
Three boys running, playing at horses. Seryozha! And I’m
losing everything and not getting him back. Yes, I’m
losing everything, if he doesn’t return. Perhaps he was late
for the train and has come back by now. Longing for
humiliation again!’ she said to herself. ‘No, I’ll go to
Dolly, and say straight out to her, I’m unhappy, I deserve
this, I’m to blame, but still I’m unhappy, help me. These
horses, this carriage—how loathsome I am to myself in
this carriage—all his; but I won’t see them again.’
Thinking over the words in which she would tell
Dolly, and mentally working her heart up to great
bitterness, Anna went upstairs.
‘Is there anyone with her?’ she asked in the hall.
‘Katerina Alexandrovna Levin,’ answered the footman.
‘Kitty! Kitty, whom Vronsky was in love with!’
thought Anna, ‘the girl he thinks of with love. He’s sorry
he didn’t marry her. But me he thinks of with hatred, and
is sorry he had anything to do with me.’
The sisters were having a consultation about nursing
when Anna called. Dolly went down alone to see the
visitor who had interrupted their conversation.
‘Well, so you’ve not gone away yet? I meant to have
come to you,’ she said; ‘I had a letter from Stiva today.’
‘We had a telegram too,’ answered Anna, looking
round for Kitty.
‘He writes that he can’t make out quite what Alexey
Alexandrovitch wants, but he won’t go away without a
decisive answer.’
‘I thought you had someone with you. Can I see the
letter?’
‘Yes; Kitty,’ said Dolly, embarrassed. ‘She stayed in the
nursery. She has been very ill.’
‘So I heard. May I see the letter?’
‘I’ll get it directly. But he doesn’t refuse; on the
contrary, Stiva has hopes,’ said Dolly, stopping in the
doorway.
‘I haven’t, and indeed I don’t wish it,’ said Anna.
‘What’s this? Does Kitty consider it degrading to meet
me?’ thought Anna when she was alone. ‘Perhaps she’s
right, too. But it’s not for her, the girl who was in love
with Vronsky, it’s not for her to show me that, even if it is
true. I know that in my position I can’t be received by any
decent woman. I knew that from the first moment I
sacrificed everything to him. And this is my reward! Oh,
how I hate him! And what did I come here for? I’m worse
here, more miserable.’ She heard from the next room the
sisters’ voices in consultation. ‘And what am I going to say
to Dolly now? Amuse Kitty by the sight of my
wretchedness, submit to her patronizing? No; and besides,
Dolly wouldn’t understand. And it would be no good my
telling her. It would only be interesting to see Kitty, to
show her how I despise everyone and everything, how
nothing matters to me now.’
Dolly came in with the letter. Anna read it and handed
it back in silence.
‘I knew all that,’ she said, ‘and it doesn’t interest me in
the least.’
‘Oh, why so? On the contrary, I have hopes,’ said
Dolly, looking inquisitively at Anna. She had never seen
her in such a strangely irritable condition. ‘When are you
going away?’ she asked.
Anna, half-closing her eyes, looked straight before her
and did not answer.
‘Why does Kitty shrink from me?’ she said, looking at
the door and flushing red.

‘Oh, what nonsense! She’s nursing, and things aren’t
going right with her, and I’ve been advising her.... She’s
delighted. She’ll be here in a minute,’ said Dolly
awkwardly, not clever at lying. ‘Yes, here she is.’
Hearing that Anna had called, Kitty had wanted not to
appear, but Dolly persuaded her. Rallying her forces, Kitty
went in, walked up to her, blushing, and shook hands.
‘I am so glad to see you,’ she said with a trembling
voice.
Kitty had been thrown into confusion by the inward
conflict between her antagonism to this bad woman and
her desire to be nice to her. But as soon as she saw Anna’s
lovely and attractive face, all feeling of antagonism
disappeared.
‘I should not have been surprised if you had not cared
to meet me. I’m used to everything. You have been ill?
Yes, you are changed,’ said Anna.
Kitty felt that Anna was looking at her with hostile
eyes. She ascribed this hostility to the awkward position in
which Anna, who had once patronized her, must feel with
her now, and she felt sorry for her.
They talked of Kitty’s illness, of the baby, of Stiva, but
it was obvious that nothing interested Anna.
‘I came to say good-bye to you,’ she said, getting up.
‘Oh, when are you going?’
But again not answering, Anna turned to Kitty.
‘Yes, I am very glad to have seen you,’ she said with a
smile. ‘I have heard so much of you from everyone, even
from your husband. He came to see me, and I liked him
exceedingly,’ she said, unmistakably with malicious intent.
‘Where is he?’
‘He has gone back to the country,’ said Kitty, blushing.
‘Remember me to him, be sure you do.’
‘I’ll be sure to!’ Kitty said naively, looking
compassionately into her eyes.
‘So good-bye, Dolly.’ And kissing Dolly and shaking
hands with Kitty, Anna went out hurriedly.
‘She’s just the same and just as charming! She’s very
lovely!’ said Kitty, when she was alone with her sister.
‘But there’s something piteous about her. Awfully
piteous!’
‘Yes, there’s something unusual about her today,’ said
Dolly. ‘When I went with her into the hall, I fancied she
was almost crying.’
Chapter 29
Anna got into the carriage again in an even worse
frame of mind than when she set out from home. To her
previous tortures was added now that sense of
mortification and of being an outcast which she had felt so
distinctly on meeting Kitty.
‘Where to? Home?’ asked Pyotr.
‘Yes, home,’ she said, not even thinking now where
she was going.
‘How they looked at me as something dreadful,
incomprehensible, and curious! What can he be telling the
other with such warmth?’ she thought, staring at two men
who walked by. ‘Can one ever tell anyone what one is
feeling? I meant to tell Dolly, and it’s a good thing I didn’t
tell her. How pleased she would have been at my misery!
She would have concealed it, but her chief feeling would
have been delight at my being punished for the happiness
she envied me for. Kitty, she would have been even more
pleased. How I can see through her! She knows I was
more than usually sweet to her husband. And she’s jealous
and hates me. And she despises me. In her eyes I’m an
immoral woman. If I were an immoral woman I could
have made her husband fall in love with me ...if I’d cared
to. And, indeed, I did care to. There’s someone who’s
pleased with himself,’ she thought, as she saw a fat,
rubicund gentleman coming towards her. He took her for
an acquaintance, and lifted his glossy hat above his bald,
glossy head, and then perceived his mistake. ‘He thought
he knew me. Well, he knows me as well as anyone in the
world knows me. I don’t know myself. I know my
appetites, as the French say. They want that dirty ice
cream, that they do know for certain,’ she thought,
looking at two boys stopping an ice cream seller, who
took a barrel off his head and began wiping his perspiring
face with a towel. ‘We all want what is sweet and nice. If
not sweetmeats, then a dirty ice. And Kitty’s the same—if
not Vronsky, then Levin. And she envies me, and hates
me. And we all hate each other. I Kitty, Kitty me. Yes,
that’s the truth. ‘Tiutkin, coiffeur.’ Je me fais coiffer par
Tiutkin.... I’ll tell him that when he comes,’ she thought
and smiled. But the same instant she remembered that she
had no one now to tell anything amusing to. ‘And there’s
nothing amusing, nothing mirthful, really. It’s all hateful.
They’re singing for vespers, and how carefully that
merchant crosses himself! as if he were afraid of missing
something. Why these churches and this singing and this
humbug? Simply to conceal that we all hate each other
like these cab drivers who are abusing each other so
angrily. Yashvin says, ‘He wants to strip me of my shirt,
and I him of his.’ Yes, that’s the truth!’
She was plunged in these thoughts, which so engrossed
her that she left off thinking of her own position, when
the carriage drew up at the steps of her house. It was only
when she saw the porter running out to meet her that she
remembered she had sent the note and the telegram
‘Is there an answer?’ she inquired.
‘I’ll see this minute,’ answered the porter, and glancing
into his room, he took out and gave her the thin square
envelope of a telegram. ‘I can’t come before ten
o’clock.—Vronsky,’ she read.
‘And hasn’t the messenger come back?’
‘No,’ answered the porter.
‘Then, since it’s so, I know what I must do,’ she said,
and feeling a vague fury and craving for revenge rising up
within her, she ran upstairs. ‘I’ll go to him myself. Before
going away forever, I’ll tell him all. Never have I hated
anyone as I hate that man!’ she thought. Seeing his hat on
the rack, she shuddered with aversion. She did not
consider that his telegram was an answer to her telegram
and that he had not yet received her note. She pictured
him to herself as talking calmly to his mother and Princess
Sorokina and rejoicing at her sufferings. ‘Yes, I must go
quickly,’ she said, not knowing yet where she was going.
She longed to get away as quickly as possible from the
feelings she had gone through in that awful house. The
servants, the walls, the things in that house—all aroused
repulsion and hatred in her and lay like a weight upon her.
‘Yes, I must go to the railway station, and if he’s not
there, then go there and catch him.’ Anna looked at the
railway timetable in the newspapers. An evening train
went at two minutes past eight. ‘Yes, I shall be in time.’
She gave orders for the other horses to be put in the
carriage, and packed in a traveling-bag the things needed
for a few days. She knew she would never come back here
again.
Among the plans that came into her head she vaguely
determined that after what would happen at the station or
at the countess’s house, she would go as far as the first
town on the Nizhni road and stop there.
Dinner was on the table; she went up, but the smell of
the bread and cheese was enough to make her feel that all
food was disgusting. She ordered the carriage and went
out. The house threw a shadow now right across the
street, but it was a bright evening and still warm in the
sunshine. Annushka, who came down with her things, and
Pyotr, who put the things in the carriage, and the
coachman, evidently out of humor, were all hateful to her,
and irritated her by their words and actions.
‘I don’t want you, Pyotr.’
‘But how about the ticket?’
‘Well, as you like, it doesn’t matter,’ she said crossly.
Pyotr jumped on the box, and putting his arms akimbo,
told the coachman to drive to the booking-office.
Chapter 30
‘Here it is again! Again I understand it all!’ Anna said to
herself, as soon as the carriage had started and swaying
lightly, rumbled over the tiny cobbles of the paved road,
and again one impression followed rapidly upon another.
‘Yes; what was the last thing I thought of so clearly?’
she tried to recall it. ‘‘Tiutkin, coiffeur?’—no, not that.
Yes, of what Yashvin says, the struggle for existence and
hatred is the one thing that holds men together. No, it’s a
useless journey you’re making,’ she said, mentally
addressing a party in a coach and four, evidently going for
an excursion into the country. ‘And the dog you’re taking
with you will be no help to you. You can’t get away from
yourselves.’ Turning her eyes in the direction Pyotr had
turned to look, she saw a factory hand almost dead drunk,
with hanging head, being led away by a policeman.
‘Come, he’s found a quicker way,’ she thought. ‘Count
Vronsky and I did not find that happiness either, though
we expected so much from it.’ And now for the first time
Anna turned that glaring light in which she was seeing
everything on to her relations with him, which she had
hitherto avoided thinking about. ‘What was it he sought

in me? Not love so much as the satisfaction of vanity.’ She
remembered his words, the expression of his face, that
recalled an abject setter-dog, in the early days of their
connection. And everything now confirmed this. ‘Yes,
there was the triumph of success in him. Of course there
was love too, but the chief element was the pride of
success. He boasted of me. Now that’s over. There’s
nothing to be proud of. Not to be proud of, but to be
ashamed of. He has taken from me all he could, and now I
am no use to him. He is weary of me and is trying not to
be dishonorable in his behavior to me. He let that out
yesterday—he wants divorce and marriage so as to burn
his ships. He loves me, but how? The zest is gone, as the
English say. That fellow wants everyone to admire him
and is very much pleased with himself,’ she thought,
looking at a red-faced clerk, riding on a riding school
horse. ‘Yes, there’s not the same flavor about me for him
now. If I go away from him, at the bottom of his heart he
will be glad.’
This was not mere supposition, she saw it distinctly in
the piercing light, which revealed to her now the meaning
of life and human relations.
‘My love keeps growing more passionate and egoistic,
while his is waning and waning, and that’s why we’re
drifting apart.’ She went on musing. ‘And there’s no help
for it. He is everything for me, and I want him more and
more to give himself up to me entirely. And he wants
more and more to get away from me. We walked to meet
each other up to the time of our love, and then we have
been irresistibly drifting in different directions. And there’s
no altering that. He tells me I’m insanely jealous, and I
have told myself that I am insanely jealous; but it’s not
true. I’m not jealous, but I’m unsatisfied. But...’ she
opened her lips, and shifted her place in the carriage in the
excitement, aroused by the thought that suddenly struck
her. ‘If I could be anything but a mistress, passionately
caring for nothing but his caresses; but I can’t and I don’t
care to be anything else. And by that desire I rouse
aversion in him, and he rouses fury in me, and it cannot
be different. Don’t I know that he wouldn’t deceive me,
that he has no schemes about Princess Sorokina, that he’s
not in love with Kitty, that he won’t desert me! I know all
that, but it makes it no better for me. If without loving
me, from DUTY he’ll be good and kind to me, without
what I want, that’s a thousand times worse than
unkindness! That’s—hell! And that’s just how it is. For a
long while now he hasn’t loved me. And where love ends,
hate begins. I don’t know these streets at all. Hills it seems,
and still houses, and houses .... And in the houses always
people and people.... How many of them, no end, and all
hating each other! Come, let me try and think what I
want, to make me happy. Well? Suppose I am divorced,
and Alexey Alexandrovitch lets me have Seryozha, and I
marry Vronsky.’ Thinking of Alexey Alexandrovitch, she
at once pictured him with extraordinary vividness as
though he were alive before her, with his mild, lifeless,
dull eyes, the blue veins in his white hands, his intonations
and the cracking of his fingers, and remembering the
feeling which had existed between them, and which was
also called love, she shuddered with loathing. ‘Well, I’m
divorced, and become Vronsky’s wife. Well, will Kitty
cease looking at me as she looked at me today? No. And
will Seryozha leave off asking and wondering about my
two husbands? And is there any new feeling I can awaken
between Vronsky and me? Is there possible, if not
happiness, some sort of ease from misery? No, no!’ she
answered now without the slightest hesitation.
‘Impossible! We are drawn apart by life, and I make his
unhappiness, and he mine, and there’s no altering him or
me. Every attempt has been made, the screw has come
unscrewed. Oh, a beggar woman with a baby. She thinks
I’m sorry for her. Aren’t we all flung into the world only
to hate each other, and so to torture ourselves and each
other? Schoolboys coming—laughing Seryozha?’ she
thought. ‘I thought, too, that I loved him, and used to be
touched by my own tenderness. But I have lived without
him, I gave him up for another love, and did not regret
the exchange till that love was satisfied.’ And with loathing
she thought of what she meant by that love. And the
clearness with which she saw life now, her own and all
men’s, was a pleasure to her. ‘It’s so with me and Pyotr,
and the coachman, Fyodor, and that merchant, and all the
people living along the Volga, where those placards invite
one to go, and everywhere and always,’ she thought when
she had driven under the low-pitched roof of the
Nizhigorod station, and the porters ran to meet her.
‘A ticket to Obiralovka?’ said Pyotr.
She had utterly forgotten where and why she was
going, and only by a great effort she understood the
question.
‘Yes,’ she said, handing him her purse, and taking a
little red bag in her hand, she got out of the carriage.
Making her way through the crowd to the first-class
waiting-room, she gradually recollected all the details of
her position, and the plans between which she was
hesitating. And again at the old sore places, hope and then
despair poisoned the wounds of her tortured, fearfully
throbbing heart. As she sat on the star-shaped sofa waiting
for the train, she gazed with aversion at the people coming
and going (they were all hateful to her), and thought how
she would arrive at the station, would write him a note,
and what she would write to him, and how he was at this
moment complaining to his mother of his position, not
understanding her sufferings, and how she would go into
the room, and what she would say to him. Then she
thought that life might still be happy, and how miserably
she loved and hated him, and how fearfully her heart was
beating.
Chapter 31
A bell rang, some young men, ugly and impudent, and
at the same time careful of the impression they were
making, hurried by. Pyotr, too, crossed the room in his
livery and top-boots, with his dull, animal face, and came
up to her to take her to the train. Some noisy men were
quiet as she passed them on the platform, and one
whispered something about her to another— something
vile, no doubt. She stepped up on the high step, and sat
down in a carriage by herself on a dirty seat that had been
white. Her bag lay beside her, shaken up and down by the
springiness of the seat. With a foolish smile Pyotr raised his
hat, with its colored band, at the window, in token of
farewell; an impudent conductor slammed the door and
the latch. A grotesque-looking lady wearing a bustle (Anna
mentally undressed the woman, and was appalled at her
hideousness), and a little girl laughing affectedly ran down
the platform.
‘Katerina Andreevna, she’s got them all, ma tante!’
cried the girl.
‘Even the child’s hideous and affected,’ thought Anna.
To avoid seeing anyone, she got up quickly and seated
herself at the opposite window of the empty carriage. A
misshapen-looking peasant covered with dirt, in a cap
from which his tangled hair stuck out all round, passed by
that window, stooping down to the carriage wheels.
‘There’s something familiar about that hideous peasant,’
thought Anna. And remembering her dream, she moved
away to the opposite door, shaking with terror. The
conductor opened the door and let in a man and his wife.
‘Do you wish to get out?’
Anna made no answer. The conductor and her two
fellow-passengers did not notice under her veil her panicstricken
face. She went back to her corner and sat down.
The couple seated themselves on the opposite side, and
intently but surreptitiously scrutinized her clothes. Both
husband and wife seemed repulsive to Anna. The husband
asked, would she allow him to smoke, obviously not with
a view to smoking but to getting into conversation with
her. Receiving her assent, he said to his wife in French
something about caring less to smoke than to talk. They
made inane and affected remarks to one another, entirely
for her benefit. Anna saw clearly that they were sick of
each other, and hated each other. And no one could have
helped hating such miserable monstrosities.

A second bell sounded, and was followed by moving of
luggage, noise, shouting and laughter. It was so clear to
Anna that there was nothing for anyone to be glad of, that
this laughter irritated her agonizingly, and she would have
liked to stop up her ears not to hear it. At last the third
bell rang, there was a whistle and a hiss of steam, and a
clank of chains, and the man in her carriage crossed
himself. ‘It would be interesting to ask him what meaning
he attaches to that,’ thought Anna, looking angrily at him.
She looked past the lady out of the window at the people
who seemed whirling by as they ran beside the train or
stood on the platform. The train, jerking at regular
intervals at the junctions of the rails, rolled by the
platform, past a stone wall, a signal-box, past other trains;
the wheels, moving more smoothly and evenly, resounded
with a slight clang on the rails. The window was lighted
up by the bright evening sun, and a slight breeze fluttered
the curtain. Anna forgot her fellow passengers, and to the
light swaying of the train she fell to thinking again, as she
breathed the fresh air.
‘Yes, what did I stop at? That I couldn’t conceive a
position in which life would not be a misery, that we are
all created to be miserable, and that we all know it, and all
invent means of deceiving each other. And when one sees
the truth, what is one to do?’
‘That’s what reason is given man for, to escape from
what worries him,’ said the lady in French, lisping
affectedly, and obviously pleased with her phrase.
The words seemed an answer to Anna’s thoughts.
‘To escape from what worries him,’ repeated Anna.
And glancing at the red-checked husband and the thin
wife, she saw that the sickly wife considered herself
misunderstood, and the husband deceived her and
encouraged her in that idea of herself. Anna seemed to see
all their history and all the crannies of their souls, as it
were turning a light upon them. But there was nothing
interesting in them, and she pursued her thought.
‘Yes, I’m very much worried, and that’s what reason
was given me for, to escape; so then one must escape: why
not put out the light when there’s nothing more to look
at, when it’s sickening to look at it all? But how? Why did
the conductor run along the footboard, why are they
shrieking, those young men in that train? why are they
talking, why are they laughing? It’s all falsehood, all lying,
all humbug, all cruelty!..’
When the train came into the station, Anna got out
into the crowd of passengers, and moving apart from them