Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 23
Chapter 23
VRONSKY had several times already, though not so resolutely as now, tried to
bring her to consider their position, and every time he had been confronted
by the same superficiality and triviality with which she met his appeal now. It was
as though there were something in this which she could not or would not face, as
though directly she began to speak of this, she, the real Anna, retreated somehow
into herself, and another strange and unaccountable woman came out, whom he did
not love, and whom he feared, and who was in opposition to him. But today he was
resolved to have it out.
“Whether he knows or not,” said Vronsky, in his usual quiet and resolute tone,
“that’s nothing to do with us. We cannot...you cannot stay like this, especially now.”
“What’s to be done, according to you?” she asked with the same frivolous irony.
She who had so feared he would take her condition too lightly was now vexed with
him for deducing from it the necessity of taking some step.
“Tell him everything, and leave him.”
“Very well, let us suppose I do that,” she said. “Do you know what the result
of that would be? I can tell you it all beforehand,” and a wicked light gleamed
in her eyes, that had been so soft a minute before. “‘Eh, you love another man, and
have entered into criminal intrigues with him?”’ (Mimicking her husband, she threw
an emphasis on the word “criminal,” as Alexey Alexandrovitch did.) “‘I warned
you of the results in the religious, the civil, and the domestic relation. You have
not listened to me. Now I cannot let you disgrace my name,–”’ “and my son,” she
had meant to say, but about her son she could not jest,–“‘disgrace my name, and’–
and more in the same style,” she added. “In general terms, he’ll say in his official
manner, and with all distinctness and precision, that he cannot let me go, but will
take all measures in his power to prevent scandal. And he will calmly and punctually
act in accordance with his words. That’s what will happen. He’s not a man, but
a machine, and a spiteful machine when he’s angry,” she added, recalling Alexey
Alexandrovitch as she spoke, with all the peculiarities of his figure and manner of
speaking, and reckoning against him every defect she could find in him, softening
nothing for the great wrong she herself was doing him.
“But, Anna,” said Vronsky, in a soft and persuasive voice, trying to soothe her,
“we absolutely must, anyway, tell him, and then be guided by the line he takes.”
“What, run away?”
“And why not run away? I don’t see how we can keep on like this. And not for
my sake–I see that you suffer.”
“Yes, run away, and become your mistress,” she said angrily.
“Anna,” he said, with reproachful tenderness.
“Yes,” she went on, “become your mistress, and complete the ruin of...”
Again she would have said “my son,” but she could not utter that word.
Vronsky could not understand how she, with her strong and truthful nature, could
endure this state of deceit, and not long to get out of it. But he did not suspect
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