Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 22
“Always the same thing,” she said, with a smile.
She spoke the truth. If ever at any moment she had been asked what she was
thinking of, she could have answered truly: of the same thing, of her happiness and
her unhappiness. She was thinking, just when he came upon her, of this: why was
it, she wondered, that to others, to Betsy (she knew of her secret connection with
Tushkevitch) it was all easy, while to her it was such torture? Today this thought
gained special poignancy from certain other considerations. She asked him about
the races. He answered her questions, and, seeing that she was agitated, trying to
calm her, he began telling her in the simplest tone the details of his preparations for
the races.
“Tell him or not tell him?” she thought, looking into his quiet, affectionate eyes.
“He is so happy, so absorbed in his races that he won’t understand as he ought, he
won’t understand all the gravity of this fact to us.”
“But you haven’t told me what you were thinking of when I came in,” he said,
interrupting his narrative; “please tell me!”
She did not answer, and, bending her head a little, she looked inquiringly at him
from under her brows, her eyes shining under their long lashes. Her hand shook
as it played with a leaf she had picked. He saw it, and his face expressed that utter
subjection, that slavish devotion, which had done so much to win her.
“I see something has happened. Do you suppose I can be at peace, knowing you
have a trouble I am not sharing? Tell me, for God’s sake,” he repeated imploringly.
“Yes, I shan’t be able to forgive him if he does not realize all the gravity of it. Better
not tell; why put him to the proof?” she thought, still staring at him in the same way,
and feeling the hand that held the leaf was trembling more and more.
“For God’s sake!” he repeated, taking her hand.
“Shall I tell you?”
“Yes, yes, yes . . .”
“I’m with child,” she said, softly and deliberately. The leaf in her hand shook more
violently, but she did not take her eyes off him, watching how he would take it. He
turned white, would have said something, but stopped; he dropped her hand, and
his head sank on his breast. “Yes, he realizes all the gravity of it,” she thought, and
gratefully she pressed his hand.
But she was mistaken in thinking he realized the gravity of the fact as she, a
woman, realized it. On hearing it, he felt come upon him with tenfold intensity
that strange feeling of loathing of someone. But at the same time, he felt that the
turning-point he had been longing for had come now; that it was impossible to go
on concealing things from her husband, and it was inevitable in one way or another
that they should soon put an end to their unnatural position. But, besides that, her
emotion physically affected him in the same way. He looked at her with a look of
submissive tenderness, kissed her hand, got up, and, in silence, paced up and down
the terrace.
“Yes,” he said, going up to her resolutely. “Neither you nor I have looked on
our relations as a passing amusement, and now our fate is sealed. It is absolutely
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