Chapter 24
‘Well, was it nice?’ she asked, coming out to meet him
with a penitent and meek expression.
‘Just as usual,’ he answered, seeing at a glance that she
was in One of her good moods. He was used by now to
these transitions, and he was particularly glad to see it
today, as he was in a specially good humor himself.
‘What do I see? Come, that’s good!’ he said, pointing
to the boxes in the passage.
‘Yes, we must go. I went out for a drive, and it was so
fine I longed to be in the country. There’s nothing to
keep you, is there?’
‘It’s the one thing I desire. I’ll be back directly, and
we’ll talk it over; I only want to change my coat. Order
some tea.’
And he went into his room.
There was something mortifying in the way he had said
‘Come, that’s good,’ as one says to a child when it leaves
off being naughty, and still more mortifying was the
contrast between her penitent and his self-confident tone;
and for one instant she felt the lust of strife rising up in her
again, but making an effort she conquered it, and met
Vronsky as good-humoredly as before.
When he came in she told him, partly repeating phrases
she had prepared beforehand, how she had spent the day,
and her plans for going away.
‘You know it came to me almost like an inspiration,’
she said. ‘Why wait here for the divorce? Won’t it be just
the same in the country? I can’t wait any longer! I don’t
want to go on hoping, I don’t want to hear anything
about the divorce. I have made up my mind it shall not
have any more influence on my life. Do you agree?’
‘Oh, yes!’ he said, glancing uneasily at her excited face.
‘What did you do? Who was there?’ she said, after a
pause.
Vronsky mentioned the names of the guests. ‘The
dinner was first rate, and the boat race, and it was all
pleasant enough, but in Moscow they can never do
anything without something ridicule. A lady of a sort
appeared on the scene, teacher of swimming to the Queen
of Sweden, and gave us an exhibition of her skill.’
‘How? did she swim?’ asked Anna, frowning.
‘In an absurd red costume de natation; she was old and
hideous too. So when shall we go?’
‘What an absurd fancy! Why, did she swim in some
special way, then?’ said Anna, not answering.
‘There was absolutely nothing in it. That’s just what I
say, it was awfully stupid. Well, then, when do you think
of going?’
Anna shook her head as though trying to drive away
some unpleasant idea.
‘When? Why, the sooner the better! By tomorrow we
shan’t be ready. The day after tomorrow.’
‘Yes...oh, no, wait a minute! The day after tomorrow’s
Sunday, I have to be at maman’s,’ said Vronsky,
embarrassed, because as soon as he uttered his mother’s
name he was aware of her intent, suspicious eyes. His
embarrassment confirmed her suspicion. She flushed hotly
and drew away from him. It was now not the Queen of
Sweden’s swimming-mistress who filled Anna’s
imagination, but the young Princess Sorokina. She was
staying in a village near Moscow with Countess
Vronskaya.
‘Can’t you go tomorrow?’ she said.
‘Well, no! The deeds and the money for the business
I’m going there for I can’t get by tomorrow,’ he
answered.
‘If so, we won’t go at all.’
‘But why so?’
‘I shall not go later. Monday or never!’
‘What for?’ said Vronsky, as though in amazement.
‘Why, there’s no meaning in it!’
‘There’s no meaning in it to you, because you care
nothing for me. You don’t care to understand my life.
The one thing that I cared for here was Hannah. You say
it’s affectation. Why, you said yesterday that I don’t love
my daughter, that I love this English girl, that it’s
unnatural. I should like to know what life there is for me
that could be natural!’
For an instant she had a clear vision of what she was
doing, and was horrified at how she had fallen away from
her resolution. But even though she knew it was her own
ruin, she could not restrain herself, could not keep herself
from proving to him that he was wrong, could not give
way to him.
‘I never said that; I said I did not sympathize with this
sudden passion.’
‘How is it, though you boast of your
straightforwardness, you don’t tell the truth?’
‘I never boast, and I never tell lies,’ he said slowly,
restraining his rising anger. ‘It’s a great pity if you can’t
respect..’
‘Respect was invented to cover the empty place where
love should be. And if you don’t love me any more, it
would be better and more honest to say so.’
‘No, this is becoming unbearable!’ cried Vronsky,
getting up from his chair; and stopping short, facing her,
he said, speaking deliberately: ‘What do you try my
patience for?’ looking as though he might have said much
more, but was restraining himself. ‘It has limits.’
‘What do you mean by that?’ she cried, looking with
terror at the undisguised hatred in his whole face, and
especially in his cruel, menacing eyes
‘I mean to say...’ he was beginning, but he checked
himself. ‘I must ask what it is you want of me?’
‘What can I want? All I can want is that you should not
desert me, as you think of doing,’ she said, understanding
all he had not uttered. ‘But that I don’t want; that’s
secondary. I want love, and there is none. So then all is
over.’
She turned towards the door.
‘Stop! sto—op!’ said Vronsky, with no change in the
gloomy lines of his brows, though he held her by the
hand. ‘What is it all about? I said that we must put off
going for three days, and on that you told me I was lying,
that I was not an honorable man.’
‘Yes, and I repeat that the man who reproaches me
with having sacrificed everything for me,’ she said,
recalling the words of a still earlier quarrel, ‘that he’s worse
than a dishonorable man— he’s a heartless man.’
‘Oh, there are limits to endurance!’ he cried, and
hastily let go her hand.
‘He hates me, that’s clear,’ she thought, and in silence,
without looking round, she walked with faltering steps out
of the room. ‘He loves another woman, that’s even
clearer,’ she said to herself as she went into her own room.
‘I want love, and there is none. So, then, all is over.’ She
repeated the words she had said, ‘and it must be ended.’
‘But how?’ she asked herself, and she sat down in a low
chair before the looking glass.
Thoughts of where she would go now, whether to the
aunt who had brought her up, to Dolly, or simply alone
abroad, and of what he was doing now alone in his study;
whether this was the final quarrel, or whether
reconciliation were still possible; and of what all her old
friends at Petersburg would say of her now; and of how
Alexey Alexandrovitch would look at it, and many other
ideas of what would happen now after this rupture, came
into her head; but she did not give herself up to them with
all her heart. At the bottom of her heart was some obscure

idea that alone interested her, but she could not get clear
sight of it. Thinking once more of Alexey Alexandrovitch,
she recalled the time of her illness after her confinement,
and the feeling which never left her at that time. ‘Why
didn’t I die?’ and the words and the feeling of that time
came back to her. And all at once she knew what was in
her soul. Yes, it was that idea which alone solved all. ‘Yes,
to die!... And the shame and disgrace of Alexey
Alexandrovitch and of Seryozha, and my awful shame, it
will all be saved by death. To die! and he will feel
remorse; will be sorry; will love me; he will suffer on my
account.’ With the trace of a smile of commiseration for
herself she sat down in the armchair, taking off and putting
on the rings on her left hand, vividly picturing from
different sides his feelings after her death.
Approaching footsteps—his steps—distracted her
attention. As though absorbed in the arrangement of her
rings, she did not even turn to him.
He went up to her, and taking her by the hand, said
softly:
‘Anna, we’ll go the day after tomorrow, if you like. I
agree to everything.’
She did not speak.
‘What is it?’ he urged.
‘You know,’ she said, and at the same instant, unable to
restrain herself any longer, she burst into sobs.
‘Cast me off!’ she articulated between her sobs. ‘I’ll go
away tomorrow...I’ll do more. What am I? An immoral
woman! A stone round your neck. I don’t want to make
you wretched, I don’t want to! I’ll set you free. You don’t
love me; you love someone else!’
Vronsky besought her to be calm, and declared that
there was no trace of foundation for her jealousy; that he
had never ceased, and never would cease, to love her; that
he loved her more than ever.
‘Anna, why distress yourself and me so?’ he said to her,
kissing her hands. There was tenderness now in his face,
and she fancied she caught the sound of tears in his voice,
and she felt them wet on her hand. And instantly Anna’s
despairing jealousy changed to a despairing passion of
tenderness. She put her arms round him, and covered with
kisses his head, his neck, his hands.
Chapter 25
Feeling that the reconciliation was complete, Anna set
eagerly to to work in the morning preparing for their
departure. Though it was not settled whether they should
go on Monday or Tuesday, as they had each given way to
the other, Anna packed busily, feeling absolutely
indifferent whether they went a day earlier or later. She
was standing in her room over an open box, taking things
out of it, when he came in to see her earlier than usually,
dressed to go out.
‘I’m going off at once to see maman; she can send me
the money by Yegorov. And I shall be ready to go
tomorrow,’ he said.
Though she was in such a good mood, the thought of
his visit to his mother’s gave her a pang.
‘No, I shan’t be ready by then myself,’ she said; and at
once reflected, ‘so then it was possible to arrange to do as I
wished.’ ‘No, do as you meant to do. Go into the dining
room, I’m coming directly. It’s only to turn out those
things that aren’t wanted,’ she said, putting something
more on the heap of frippery that lay in Annushka’s arms.
Vronsky was eating his beefsteak when she came into
the dining- room.
‘You wouldn’t believe how distasteful these rooms
have become to me,’ she said, sitting down beside him to
her coffee. ‘There’s nothing more awful than these
chambres garnies. There’s no individuality in them, no
soul. These clocks, and curtains, and, worst of all, the
wallpapers—they’re a nightmare. I think of
Vozdvizhenskoe as the promised land. You’re not sending
the horses off yet?’
‘No, they will come after us. Where are you going to?’
‘I wanted to go to Wilson’s to take some dresses to her.
So it’s really to be tomorrow?’ she said in a cheerful voice;
but suddenly her face changed.
Vronsky’s valet came in to ask him to sign a receipt for
a telegram from Petersburg. There was nothing out of the
way in Vronsky’s getting a telegram, but he said, as though
anxious to conceal something from her, that the receipt
was in his study, and he turned hurriedly to her.
‘By tomorrow, without fail, I will finish it all.’
‘From whom is the telegram?’ she asked, not hearing
him.
‘From Stiva,’ he answered reluctantly.
‘Why didn’t you show it to me? What secret can there
be between Stiva and me?’
Vronsky called the valet back, and told him to bring
the telegram.
‘I didn’t want to show it to you, because Stiva has such
a passion for telegraphing: why telegraph when nothing is
settled?’
‘About the divorce?’
‘Yes; but he says he has not been able to come at
anything yet. He has promised a decisive answer in a day
or two. But here it is; read it.’
With trembling hands Anna took the telegram, and
read what Vronsky had told her. At the end was added:
‘Little hope; but I will do everything possible and
impossible.’
‘I said yesterday that it’s absolutely nothing to me when
I get, or whether I never get, a divorce,’ she said, flushing
crimson. ‘There was not the slightest necessity to hide it
from me.’ ‘So he may hide and does hide his
correspondence with women from me,’ she thought.
‘Yashvin meant to come this morning with Voytov,’
said Vronsky; ‘I believe he’s won from Pyevtsov all and
more than he can pay, about sixty thousand.’

‘No,’ she said, irritated by his so obviously showing by
this change of subject that he was irritated, ‘why did you
suppose that this news would affect me so, that you must
even try to hide it? I said I don’t want to consider it, and I
should have liked you to care as little about it as I do.’
‘I care about it because I like definiteness,’ he said.
‘Definiteness is not in the form but the love,’ she said,
more and more irritated, not by his words, but by the tone
of cool composure in which he spoke. ‘What do you want
it for?’
‘My God! love again,’ he thought, frowning.
‘Oh, you know what for; for your sake and your
children’s in the future.’
‘There won’t be children in the future.’
‘That’s a great pity,’ he said.
‘You want it for the children’s sake, but you don’t
think of me?’ she said, quite forgetting or not having heard
that he had said, ‘for your sake and the children’s.’
The question of the possibility of having children had
long been a subject of dispute and irritation to her. His
desire to have children she interpreted as a proof he did
not prize her beauty.
‘Oh, I said: for your sake. Above all for your sake,’ he
repeated, frowning as though in pain, ‘because I am
certain that the greater part of your irritability comes from
the indefiniteness of the position.’
‘Yes, now he has laid aside all pretense, and all his cold
hatred for me is apparent,’ she thought, not hearing his
words, but watching with terror the cold, cruel judge who
looked mocking her out of his eyes.
‘The cause is not that,’ she said, ‘and, indeed, I don’t
see how the cause of my irritability, as you call it, can be
that I am completely in your power. What indefiniteness is
there in the position? on the contrary..’
‘I am very sorry that you don’t care to understand,’ he
interrupted, obstinately anxious to give utterance to his
thought. ‘The indefiniteness consists in your imagining
that I am free.’
‘On that score you can set your mind quite at rest,’ she
said, and turning away from him, she began drinking her
coffee.
She lifted her cup, with her little finger held apart, and
put it to her lips. After drinking a few sips she glanced at
him, and by his expression, she saw clearly that he was
repelled by her hand, and her gesture, and the sound made
by her lips.
‘I don’t care in the least what your mother thinks, and
what match she wants to make for you,’ she said, putting
the cup down with a shaking hand.
‘But we are not talking about that.’
‘Yes, that’s just what we are talking about. And let me
tell you that a heartless woman, whether she’s old or not
old, your mother or anyone else, is of no consequence to
me, and I would not consent to know her.’
‘Anna, I beg you not to speak disrespectfully of my
mother.’
‘A woman whose heart does not tell her where her
son’s happiness and honor lie has no heart.’
‘I repeat my request that you will not speak
disrespectfully of my mother, whom I respect,’ he said,
raising his voice and looking sternly at her
She did not answer. Looking intently at him, at his
face, his hands, she recalled all the details of their
reconciliation the previous day, and his passionate caresses.
‘There, just such caresses he has lavished, and will lavish,
and longs to lavish on other women!’ she thought.
‘You don’t love your mother. That’s all talk, and talk,
and talk!’ she said, looking at him with hatred in her eyes.
‘Even if so, you must..’
‘Must decide, and I have decided,’ she said, and she
would have gone away, but at that moment Yashvin
walked into the room. Anna greeted him and remained.
Why, when there was a tempest in her soul, and she
felt she was standing at a turning point in her life, which
might have fearful consequences—why, at that minute,
she had to keep up appearances before an outsider, who
sooner or later must know it all—she did not know. But at
once quelling the storm within her, she sat down and
began talking to their guest.
‘Well, how are you getting on? Has your debt been
paid you?’ she asked Yashvin.
‘Oh, pretty fair; I fancy I shan’t get it all, but I shall get
a good half. And when are you off?’ said Yashvin, looking
at Vronsky, and unmistakably guessing at a quarrel.
‘The day after tomorrow, I think,’ said Vronsky.
‘You’ve been meaning to go so long, though.’
‘But now it’s quite decided,’ said Anna, looking
Vronsky straight in the face with a look which told him
not to dream of the possibility of reconciliation.
‘Don’t you feel sorry for that unlucky Pyevtsov?’ she
went on, talking to Yashvin.
‘I’ve never asked myself the question, Anna
Arkadyevna, whether I’m sorry for him or not. You see,
all my fortune’s here’—he touched his breast pocket—
‘and just now I’m a wealthy man. But today I’m going to
the club, and I may come out a beggar. You see, whoever
sits down to play with me—he wants to leave me without
a shirt to my back, and so do I him. And so we fight it
out, and that’s the pleasure of it.’
‘Well, but suppose you were married,’ said Anna, ‘how
would it be for your wife?’
Yashvin laughed.
‘That’s why I’m not married, and never mean to be.’
‘And Helsingfors?’ said Vronsky, entering into the
conversation and glancing at Anna’s smiling face. Meeting
his eyes, Anna’s face instantly took a coldly severe
expression as though she were saying to him: ‘It’s not
forgotten. It’s all the same.’
‘Were you really in love?’ she said to Yashvin.
‘Oh heavens! ever so many times! But you see, some
men can play but only so that they can always lay down
their cards when the hour of a rendezvous comes, while I
can take up love, but only so as not to be late for my cards
in the evening. That’s how I manage things.’
‘No, I didn’t mean that, but the real thing.’ She would
have said Helsingfors, but would not repeat the word used
by Vronsky.
Voytov, who was buying the horse, came in. Anna got
up and went out of the room.
Before leaving the house, Vronsky went into her room.
She would have pretended to be looking for something on
the table, but ashamed of making a pretense, she looked
straight in his face with cold eyes.
‘What do you want?’ she asked in French.
‘To get the guarantee for Gambetta, I’ve sold him,’ he
said, in a tone which said more clearly than words, ‘I’ve
no time for discussing things, and it would lead to
nothing.’
‘I’m not to blame in any way,’ he thought. ‘If she will
punish herself, tant pis pour elle.’ But as he was going he
fancied that she said something, and his heart suddenly
ached with pity for her.
‘Eh, Anna?’ he queried.
‘I said nothing,’ she answered just as coldly and calmly.
‘Oh, nothing, tant pis then,’ he thought, feeling cold
again, and he turned and went out. As he was going out
he caught a glimpse in the looking glass of her face, white,
with quivering lips. He even wanted to stop and to say
some comforting word to her, but his legs carried him out
of the room before he could think what to say. The whole
of that day he spent away from home, and when he came
in late in the evening the maid told him that Anna
Arkadyevna had a headache and begged him not to go in
to her.