Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FOUR CHAPTER 21
“I have heard it said that women love men even for their vices,” Anna began
suddenly, “but I hate him for his virtues. I can’t live with him. Do you understand?
the sight of him has a physical effect on me, it makes me beside myself. I can’t, I
can’t live with him. What am I to do? I have been unhappy, and used to think one
couldn’t be more unhappy, but the awful state of things I am going through now, I
could never have conceived. Would you believe it, that knowing he’s a good man, a
splendid man, that I’m not worth his little finger, still I hate him. I hate him for his
generosity. And there’s nothing left for me but...”
She would have said death, but Stepan Arkadyevitch would not let her finish.
“You are ill and overwrought,” he said; “believe me, you’re exaggerating dreadfully.
There’s nothing so terrible in it.”
And Stepan Arkadyevitch smiled. No one else in Stepan Arkadyevitch’s place,
having to do with such despair, would have ventured to smile (the smile would
have seemed brutal); but in his smile there was so much of sweetness and almost
feminine tenderness that his smile did not wound, but softened and soothed. His
gentle, soothing words and smiles were as soothing and softening as almond oil.
And Anna soon felt this.
“No, Stiva,” she said, “I’m lost, lost! worse than lost! I can’t say yet that all is over;
on the contrary, I feel that it’s not over. I’m an overstrained string that must snap.
But it’s not ended yet...and it will have a fearful end.”
“No matter, we must let the string be loosened, little by little. There’s no position
from which there is no way of escape.”
“I have thought, and thought. Only one...”
Again he knew from her terrified eyes that this one way of escape in her thought
was death, and he would not let her say it.
“Not at all,” he said. “Listen to me. You can’t see your own position as I can. Let
me tell you candidly my opinion.” Again he smiled discreetly his almond-oil smile.
“I’ll begin from the beginning. You married a man twenty years older than yourself.
You married him without love and not knowing what love was. It was a mistake,
let’s admit.”
“A fearful mistake!” said Anna.
“But I repeat, it’s an accomplished fact. Then you had, let us say, the misfortune
to love a man not your husband. That was a misfortune; but that, too, is an accomplished
fact. And your husband knew it and forgave it.” He stopped at each
sentence, waiting for her to object, but she made no answer. “That’s so. Now the
question is: can you go on living with your husband? Do you wish it? Does he wish
it?”
“I know nothing, nothing.”
“But you said yourself that you can’t endure him.”
“No, I didn’t say so. I deny it. I can’t tell, I don’t know anything about it.”
“Yes, but let...”
“You can’t understand. I feel I’m lying head downwards in a sort of pit, but I
ought not to save myself. And I can’t . . .”
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