Anna Karenina (Literature Classics Series). Leo Tolstoy

he entered she was wondering why, for others, Betsy for instance (of whose secret relations with Tushkevich she knew), it was all easy, while for her it was so tormenting. For certain reasons this thought troubled her more particularly to-day. She inquired about the races. Vronsky answered her, and noticing that she was excited, in order to distract her thoughts began giving her in a very matter-of-fact way particulars of the preparations for the races.

      ‘Shall I tell him or not?’ she thought, looking at his calm, caressing eyes. ‘He is so happy, so full of his races, that he won’t understand it properly, won’t understand all the importance of the event for us.’

      ‘But you have not told me what you were thinking about when I came in,’ he said, breaking off his narration.

      She did not answer, but, slightly bowing her head, looked at him from under her brows questioningly, her eyes shining from under their long lashes. Her hand, toying with a leaf that she had pulled off, trembled. He noticed this, and his face assumed that submissive, slavishly-devoted expression that had such an effect on Anna.

      ‘I see that something has happened. How can I be a moment at peace knowing that you have some sorrow which I am not sharing? Tell me, for Heaven’s sake!’ he repeated entreatingly.

      ‘I cannot forgive him if he does not understand all the importance of it. Better not tell him, — why put him to the proof?’ she thought, continuing to look at him in the same way and feeling that her hand with the leaf was trembling more and more.

      ‘For heaven’s sake!’ he repeated, taking her hand.

      ‘Shall I?’

      ‘Yes, yes, yes …’

      ‘I am pregnant,’ she said softly and slowly.

      The leaf in her hand shook still more violently, but she did not move her eyes from his face, watching to see how he would take it. He grew pale, tried to say something, but stopped, dropped her hand, and bowed his head. ‘Yes, he understands its full significance,’ she thought, and gratefully pressed his hand.

      But she was mistaken in thinking that he understood the importance of the news as she, a woman, understood it. It brought on with tenfold force an attack of that strange repulsion to — he knew not whom; but at the same time he felt that the crisis he had hoped for had now come, that concealment from the husband was no longer possible, and that somehow or other the unnatural situation must be quickly ended. But, besides this, her physical agitation communicated itself to him. He gave her a look full of emotion, humbly kissed her hand, rose, and began silently pacing up and down the verandah.

      ‘Yes,’ he said, resolutely approaching her. ‘Neither you nor I looked on our union as an amusement, and now our fate is sealed. We must end’ — he went on, looking round — ‘this falsehood in which we are living.’

      ‘End it? How are we to end it, Alexis?’ she said softly.

      She was quiet now and her face shone with a tender smile.

      ‘By your leaving your husband and our uniting our lives.’

      ‘They are united already,’ she replied in a scarcely audible tone.

      ‘Yes, but entirely.’

      ‘But how, Alexis, teach me how?’ she said with pathetic irony at the inevitability of her position. ‘Is there any escape from such a position? Am I not my husband’s wife?’

      ‘There is a way out of every position. One has to take a decision,’ he said. ‘Anything would be better than the condition in which you are living. Don’t I see how you suffer from everything — Society, your son, and your husband?’

      ‘Oh, but not through my husband,’ she said with natural irony. ‘I don’t know him and don’t think about him. He does not exist.’

      ‘You are not speaking sincerely. I know you. You suffer from him too.’

      ‘But he does not even know,’ she said, and suddenly a vivid flush suffused her face. Her cheeks, her forehead, and her neck turned red, and tears of shame appeared in her eyes. ‘Do not let us speak of him.’

      Chapter 23

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      VRONSKY had tried several times before, though never so definitely as now, to lead her on to a discussion of her position, and had always encountered the same superficiality and lightness of judgment with which she now replied to his challenge. It was as if there was something that she could not, and would not, make clear to herself, or as if as soon as she began to speak about this matter, she, the real Anna, withdrew into herself and another woman appeared who was strange and alien to him, whom he feared and did not like, and who resisted him. But to-day he decided to speak out.

      ‘Whether he knows or not,’ said Vronsky in his usual firm, calm tone, ‘that is not our business. We cannot … You cannot remain as you are, especially now.’

      ‘What would you have me do?’ she asked with the same light irony. She who had so feared that he might take her pregnancy too lightly now felt vexed that he deduced therefrom the necessity of doing something.

      ‘Tell him everything, leave him.’

      ‘Very well; suppose I do so!’ she said. ‘Do you know what the result will be? I will tell it you all in advance,’ and an evil light came into her eyes which a minute before had been so tender. ‘ “Ah, you love another and have entered into a guilty union with him?” ’ (mimicking her husband, she laid just such a stress on the word guilty as Karenin himself would have done). ‘ “I warned you of the consequences from the religious, civil, and family points of view. You have not listened to me. Now I cannot allow my name to be dishonoured …” ’ my name and my son she was going to say but could not jest about her son … ‘ “my name to be dishonoured” and something else of that kind,’ she added. ‘In short, he will tell me clearly and precisely in his official manner that he cannot let me go, but will take what measures he can to prevent a scandal. And he will do what he says, quietly and accurately. That is what will happen. He is not a man, but a machine, and a cruel machine when angry,’ she added, picturing Karenin to herself with every detail of his figure and way of speaking, setting against him everything bad she could find in him and forgiving him nothing, on account of the terrible fault toward him of which she was guilty.

      ‘But, Anna,’ said Vronsky persuasively and gently, trying to pacify her, ‘he must be told, all the same, and afterwards our action will be guided by his attitude.’

      ‘What then, run away?’

      ‘And why not run away? I think it is impossible to continue in this way. And not on my account, — I see that you suffer.’

      ‘Yes, run away, and for me to live as your mistress,’ she said maliciously.

      ‘Anna,’ he murmured with reproachful tenderness.

      ‘Yes,’ she continued. ‘Become your mistress and ruin my … everything.’

      She was again going to say ‘son’ but could not utter the word.

      Vronsky could not understand how she, with her strong honest nature, could endure this state of deception and not wish to escape from it; but he did not guess that the chief cause lay in the one word ‘son’ which she could not bring herself to utter. When she thought about her son and his future relations with the mother who had left his father, she was so terrified at what she had done that she did not reason, but woman-like only tried to comfort herself with false arguments and words in order that everything should remain as before and that she might forget the dreadful question of what would happen to her son.

      ‘I beg you, I entreat you,’ said she suddenly in quite an altered tone, sincerely and tenderly, taking him by the hand, ‘never to speak to me about that!’

      ‘But, Anna …’

      ‘Never.