Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FOUR CHAPTER 20
Chapter 20
ALEXEY Alexandrovitch took leave of Betsy in the drawing room, and went to his
wife. She was lying down, but hearing his steps she sat up hastily in her former
attitude, and looked in a scared way at him. He saw she had been crying.
“I am very grateful for your confidence in me.” He repeated gently in Russian the
phrase he had said in Betsy’s presence in French, and sat down beside her. When he
spoke to her in Russian, using the Russian “thou” of intimacy and affection, it was
insufferably irritating to Anna. “And I am very grateful for your decision. I, too,
imagine that since he is going away, there is no sort of necessity for Count Vronsky
to come here. However, if...”
“But I’ve said so already, so why repeat it?” Anna suddenly interrupted him with
an irritation she could not succeed in repressing. “No sort of necessity,” she thought,
“for a man to come and say good-bye to the woman he loves, for whom he was ready
to ruin himself, and has ruined himself, and who cannot live without him. No sort
of necessity!” she compressed her lips, and dropped her burning eyes to his hands
with their swollen veins. They were rubbing each other.
“Let us never speak of it,” she added more calmly.
“I have left this question to you to decide, and I am very glad to see...” Alexey
Alexandrovitch was beginning.
“That my wish coincides with your own,” she finished quickly, exasperated at his
talking so slowly while she knew beforehand all he would say.
“Yes,” he assented; “and Princess Tverskaya’s interference in the most difficult
private affairs is utterly uncalled for. She especially...”
“I don’t believe a word of what’s said about her,” said Anna quickly. “I know she
really cares for me.”
Alexey Alexandrovitch sighed and said nothing. She played nervously with the
tassel of her dressing-gown, glancing at him with that torturing sensation of physical
repulsion for which she blamed herself, though she could not control it. Her only
desire now was to be rid of his oppressive presence.
“I have just sent for the doctor,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch.
“I am very well; what do I want the doctor for?”
“No, the little one cries, and they say the nurse hasn’t enough milk.”
“Why didn’t you let me nurse her, when I begged to? Anyway” (Alexey Alexandrovitch
knew what was meant by that “anyway“), “she’s a baby, and they’re killing
her.” She rang the bell and ordered the baby to be brought her. “I begged to nurse
her, I wasn’t allowed to, and now I’m blamed for it.”
“I don’t blame...”
“Yes, you do blame me! My God! why didn’t I die!” And she broke into sobs. “Forgive
me, I’m nervous, I’m unjust,” she said, controlling herself, “but do go away...”
“No, it can’t go on like this,” Alexey Alexandrovitch said to himself decidedly as
he left his wife’s room.
393