Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART TWO CHAPTER 29
Chapter 29
EVERYONE was loudly expressing disapprobation, everyone was repeating a
phrase some one had uttered–”The lions and gladiators will be the next thing,”
and everyone was feeling horrified; so that when Vronsky fell to the ground, and
Anna moaned aloud, there was nothing very out of the way in it. But afterwards a
change came over Anna’s face which really was beyond decorum. She utterly lost
her head. She began fluttering like a caged bird, at one moment would have got up
and moved away, at the next turned to Betsy.
“Let us go, let us go!” she said.
But Betsy did not hear her. She was bending down, talking to a general who had
come up to her.
Alexey Alexandrovitch went up to Anna and courteously offered her his arm.
“Let us go, if you like,” he said in French, but Anna was listening to the general
and did not notice her husband.
“He’s broken his leg too, so they say,” the general was saying. “This is beyond
everything.”
Without answering her husband, Anna lifted her opera glass and gazed towards
the place where Vronsky had fallen; but it was so far off, and there was such a crowd
of people about it, that she could make out nothing. She laid down the opera glass,
and would have moved away, but at that moment an officer galloped up and made
some announcement to the Tsar. Anna craned forward, listening.
“Stiva! Stiva!” she cried to her brother.
But her brother did not hear her. Again she would have moved away.
“Once more I offer you my arm if you want to be going,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch,
reaching towards her hand.
She drew back from him with aversion, and without looking in his face answered:
“No, no, let me be, I’ll stay.”
She saw now that from the place of Vronsky’s accident an officer was running
across the course towards the pavilion. Betsy waved her handkerchief to him. The
officer brought the news that the rider was not killed, but the horse had broken its
back.
On hearing this Anna sat down hurriedly, and hid her face in her fan. Alexey
Alexandrovitch saw that she was weeping, and could not control her tears, nor even
the sobs that were shaking her bosom. Alexey Alexandrovitch stood so as to screen
her, giving her time to recover herself.
“For the third time I offer you my arm,” he said to her after a little time, turning
to her. Anna gazed at him and did not know what to say. Princess Betsy came to her
rescue.
“No, Alexey Alexandrovitch; I brought Anna and I promised to take her home,”
put in Betsy.
199