Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 7
“Remember that I have forbidden you to utter that word, that hateful word,” said
Anna, with a shudder. But at once she felt that by that very word “forbidden” she
had shown that she acknowledged certain rights over him, and by that very fact was
encouraging him to speak of love. “I have long meant to tell you this,” she went
on, looking resolutely into his eyes, and hot all over from the burning flush on her
cheeks. “I’ve come on purpose this evening, knowing I should meet you. I have
come to tell you that this must end. I have never blushed before anyone, and you
force me to feel to blame for something.”
He looked at her and was struck by a new spiritual beauty in her face.
“What do you wish of me?” he said simply and seriously.
“I want you to go to Moscow and ask for Kitty’s forgiveness,” she said.
“You don’t wish that?” he said.
He saw she was saying what she forced herself to say, not what she wanted to say.
“If you love me, as you say,” she whispered, “do so that I may be at peace.”
His face grew radiant.
“Don’t you know that you’re all my life to me? But I know no peace, and I can’t
give it to you; all myself–and love...yes. I can’t think of you and myself apart. You
and I are one to me. And I see no chance before us of peace for me or for you. I see a
chance of despair, of wretchedness...or I see a chance of bliss, what bliss!... Can it be
there’s no chance of it?” he murmured with his lips; but she heard.
She strained every effort of her mind to say what ought to be said. But instead of
that she let her eyes rest on him, full of love, and made no answer.
“It’s come!” he thought in ecstasy. “When I was beginning to despair, and it
seemed there would be no end–it’s come! She loves me! She owns it!”
“Then do this for me: never say such things to me, and let us be friends,” she said
in words; but her eyes spoke quite differently.
“Friends we shall never be, you know that yourself. Whether we shall be the
happiest or the wretchedest of people–that’s in your hands.”
She would have said something, but he interrupted her.
“I ask one thing only: I ask for the right to hope, to suffer as I do. But if even that
cannot be, command me to disappear, and I disappear. You shall not see me if my
presence is distasteful to you.”
“I don’t want to drive you away.”
“Only don’t change anything, leave everything as it is,” he said in a shaky voice.
“Here’s your husband.”
At that instant Alexey Alexandrovitch did in fact walk into the room with his calm,
awkward gait.
Glancing at his wife and Vronsky, he went up to the lady of the house, and sitting
down for a cup of tea, began talking in his deliberate, always audible voice, in his
habitual tone of banter, ridiculing someone.
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