Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FOUR CHAPTER 19
The baby screamed louder than ever, struggling and sobbing. The nurse, with a
gesture of despair, went to it, took it from the wet-nurse’s arms, and began walking
up and down, rocking it.
“You must ask the doctor to examine the wet-nurse,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch.
The smartly dressed and healthy-looking nurse, frightened at the idea of losing her
place, muttered something to herself, and covering her bosom, smiled contemptuously
at the idea of doubts being cast on her abundance of milk. In that smile, too,
Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a sneer at his position.
“Luckless child!” said the nurse, hushing the baby, and still walking up and down
with it.
Alexey Alexandrovitch sat down, and with a despondent and suffering face
watched the nurse walking to and fro.
When the child at last was still, and had been put in a deep bed, and the nurse,
after smoothing the little pillow, had left her, Alexey Alexandrovitch got up, and
walking awkwardly on tiptoe, approached the baby. For a minute he was still, and
with the same despondent face gazed at the baby; but all at once a smile, that moved
his hair and the skin of his forehead, came out on his face, and he went as softly out
of the room.
In the dining room he rang the bell, and told the servant who came in to send again
for the doctor. He felt vexed with his wife for not being anxious about this exquisite
baby, and in this vexed humor he had no wish to go to her; he had no wish, either,
to see Princess Betsy. But his wife might wonder why he did not go to her as usual;
and so, overcoming his disinclination, he went towards the bedroom. As he walked
over the soft rug towards the door, he could not help overhearing a conversation he
did not want to hear.
“If he hadn’t been going away, I could have understood your answer and his too.
But your husband ought to be above that,” Betsy was saying.
“It’s not for my husband; for myself I don’t wish it. Don’t say that!” answered
Anna’s excited voice.
“Yes, but you must care to say good-bye to a man who has shot himself on your
account....”
“That’s just why I don’t want to.”
With a dismayed and guilty expression, Alexey Alexandrovitch stopped and
would have gone back unobserved. But reflecting that this would be undignified, he
turned back again, and clearing his throat, he went up to the bedroom. The voices
were silent, and he went in.
Anna, in a gray dressing gown, with a crop of short clustering black curls on her
round head, was sitting on a settee. The eagerness died out of her face, as it always
did, at the sight of her husband; she dropped her head and looked round uneasily
at Betsy. Betsy, dressed in the height of the latest fashion, in a hat that towered
somewhere over her head like a shade on a lamp, in a blue dress with violet crossway
stripes slanting one way on the bodice and the other way on the skirt, was sitting
beside Anna, her tall flat figure held erect. Bowing her head, she greeted Alexey
Alexandrovitch with an ironical smile.
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