Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FOUR CHAPTER 3
She drew a long face, and half-closing her eyes, quickly transformed her expression,
folded her hands, and Vronsky suddenly saw in her beautiful face the very expression
with which Alexey Alexandrovitch had bowed to him. He smiled, while she
laughed gaily, with that sweet, deep laugh, which was one of her greatest charms.
“I don’t understand him in the least,” said Vronsky. “If after your avowal to him at
your country house he had broken with you, if he had called me out–but this I can’t
understand. How can he put up with such a position? He feels it, that’s evident.”
“He?” she said sneeringly. “He’s perfectly satisfied.”
“What are we all miserable for, when everything might be so happy?”
“Only not he. Don’t I know him, the falsity in which he’s utterly steeped?... Could
one, with any feeling, live as he is living with me? He understands nothing, and
feels nothing. Could a man of any feeling live in the same house with his unfaithful
wife? Could he talk to her, call her ‘my dear’?”
And again she could not help mimicking him: “‘Anna, ma chère; Anna, dear’!”
“He’s not a man, not a human being–he’s a doll! No one knows him; but I know
him. Oh, if I’d been in his place, I’d long ago have killed, have torn to pieces a
wife like me. I wouldn’t have said, ‘Anna, ma chere’! He’s not a man, he’s an official
machine. He doesn’t understand that I’m your wife, that he’s outside, that he’s
superfluous.... Don’t let’s talk of him!...”
“You’re unfair, very unfair, dearest,” said Vronsky, trying to soothe her. “But never
mind, don’t let’s talk of him. Tell me what you’ve been doing? What is the matter?
What has been wrong with you, and what did the doctor say?”
She looked at him with mocking amusement. Evidently she had hit on other absurd
and grotesque aspects in her husband and was awaiting the moment to give
expression to them.
But he went on:
“I imagine that it’s not illness, but your condition. When will it be?”
The ironical light died away in her eyes, but a different smile, a consciousness of
something, he did not know what, and of quiet melancholy, came over her face.
“Soon, soon. You say that our position is miserable, that we must put an end to it.
If you knew how terrible it is to me, what I would give to be able to love you freely
and boldly! I should not torture myself and torture you with my jealousy.... And it
will come soon, but not as we expect.”
And at the thought of how it would come, she seemed so pitiable to herself that
tears came into her eyes, and she could not go on. She laid her hand on his sleeve,
dazzling and white with its rings in the lamplight.
“It won’t come as we suppose. I didn’t mean to say this to you, but you’ve made
me. Soon, soon, all will be over, and we shall all, all be at peace, and suffer no more.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, understanding her.
“You asked when? Soon. And I shan’t live through it. Don’t interrupt me!” and
she made haste to speak. “I know it; I know for certain. I shall die; and I’m very glad
I shall die, and release myself and you.”
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