Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 23
that the chief cause of it was the word–son, which she could not bring herself to
pronounce. When she thought of her son, and his future attitude to his mother, who
had abandoned his father, she felt such terror at what she had done, that she could
not face it; but, like a woman, could only try to comfort herself with lying assurances
that everything would remain as it always had been, and that it was possible to forget
the fearful question of how it would be with her son.
“I beg you, I entreat you,” she said suddenly, taking his hand, and speaking in
quite a different tone, sincere and tender, “never speak to me of that!”
“But, Anna...”
“Never. Leave it to me. I know all the baseness, all the horror of my position; but
it’s not so easy to arrange as you think. And leave it to me, and do what I say. Never
speak to me of it. Do you promise me?...No, no, promise!...”
“I promise everything, but I can’t be at peace, especially after what you have told
me. I can’t be at peace, when you can’t be at peace....”
“I?” she repeated. “Yes, I am worried sometimes; but that will pass, if you will
never talk about this. When you talk about it–it’s only then it worries me.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“I know,” she interrupted him, “how hard it is for your truthful nature to lie, and
I grieve for you. I often think that you have ruined your whole life for me.”
“I was just thinking the very same thing,” he said; “how could you sacrifice everything
for my sake? I can’t forgive myself that you’re unhappy!”
“I unhappy?” she said, coming closer to him, and looking at him with an ecstatic
smile of love. “I am like a hungry man who has been given food. He may be cold,
and dressed in rags, and ashamed, but he is not unhappy. I unhappy? No, this is my
unhappiness....”
She could hear the sound of her son’s voice coming towards them, and glancing
swiftly round the terrace, she got up impulsively. Her eyes glowed with the fire he
knew so well; with a rapid movement she raised her lovely hands, covered with
rings, took his head, looked a long look into his face, and, putting up her face with
smiling, parted lips, swiftly kissed his mouth and both eyes, and pushed him away.
She would have gone, but he held her back.
“When?” he murmured in a whisper, gazing in ecstasy at her.
“Tonight, at one o’clock,” she whispered, and, with a heavy sigh, she walked with
her light, swift step to meet her son.
Seryozha had been caught by the rain in the big garden, and he and his nurse had
taken shelter in an arbor.
“Well, au revoir,” she said to Vronsky. “I must soon be getting ready for the races.
Betsy promised to fetch me.”
Vronsky, looking at his watch, went away hurriedly.
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