Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FOUR CHAPTER 12
“Alexey Alexandrovitch,” she said, with desperate resolution looking him in the
face, “I asked you about Anna, you made me no answer. How is she?”
“She is, I believe, quite well, Darya Alexandrovna,” replied Alexey Alexandrovitch,
not looking at her.
“Alexey Alexandrovitch, forgive me, I have no right...but I love Anna as a sister,
and esteem her; I beg, I beseech you to tell me what is wrong between you? what
fault do you find with her?”
Alexey Alexandrovitch frowned, and almost closing his eyes, dropped his head.
“I presume that your husband has told you the grounds on which I consider it
necessary to change my attitude to Anna Arkadyevna?” he said, not looking her
in the face, but eyeing with displeasure Shtcherbatsky, who was walking across the
drawing room.
“I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it, I can’t believe it!” Dolly said, clasping her
bony hands before her with a vigorous gesture. She rose quickly, and laid her hand
on Alexey Alexandrovitch’s sleeve. “We shall be disturbed here. Come this way,
please.”
Dolly’s agitation had an effect on Alexey Alexandrovitch. He got up and submissively
followed her to the schoolroom. They sat down to a table covered with an
oilcloth cut in slits by penknives.
“I don’t, I don’t believe it!” Dolly said, trying to catch his glance that avoided her.
“One cannot disbelieve facts, Darya Alexandrovna,” said he, with an emphasis on
the word “facts.”
“But what has she done?” said Darya Alexandrovna. “What precisely has she
done?”
“She has forsaken her duty, and deceived her husband. That’s what she has done,”
said he.
“No, no, it can’t be! No, for God’s sake, you are mistaken,” said Dolly, putting her
hands to her temples and closing her eyes.
Alexey Alexandrovitch smiled coldly, with his lips alone, meaning to signify to
her and to himself the firmness of his conviction; but this warm defense, though it
could not shake him, reopened his wound. He began to speak with greater heat.
“It is extremely difficult to be mistaken when a wife herself informs her husband
of the fact–informs him that eight years of her life, and a son, all that’s a mistake,
and that she wants to begin life again,” he said angrily, with a snort.
“Anna and sin–I cannot connect them, I cannot believe it!”
“Darya Alexandrovna,” he said, now looking straight into Dolly’s kindly, troubled
face, and feeling that his tongue was being loosened in spite of himself, “I would give
a great deal for doubt to be still possible. When I doubted, I was miserable, but it
was better than now. When I doubted, I had hope; but now there is no hope, and
still I doubt of everything. I am in such doubt of everything that I even hate my son,
and sometimes do not believe he is my son. I am very unhappy.”
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