Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART FOUR CHAPTER 23
“So much the better,” thought Vronsky, when he received the news. “It was a
weakness, which would have shattered what strength I have left.”
Next day Betsy herself came to him in the morning, and announced that she had
heard through Oblonsky as a positive fact that Alexey Alexandrovitch had agreed to
a divorce, and that therefore Vronsky could see Anna.
Without even troubling himself to see Betsy out of his flat, forgetting all his resolutions,
without asking when he could see her, where her husband was, Vronsky
drove straight to the Karenins’. He ran up the stairs seeing no one and nothing, and
with a rapid step, almost breaking into a run, he went into her room. And without
considering, without noticing whether there was anyone in the room or not, he flung
his arms round her, and began to cover her face, her hands, her neck with kisses.
Anna had been preparing herself for this meeting, had thought what she would
say to him, but she did not succeed in saying anything of it; his passion mastered
her. She tried to calm him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling infected
her. Her lips trembled so that for a long while she could say nothing.
“Yes, you have conquered me, and I am yours,” she said at last, pressing his hands
to her bosom.
“So it had to be,” he said. “So long as we live, it must be so. I know it now.”
“That’s true,” she said, getting whiter and whiter, and embracing his head. “Still
there is something terrible in it after all that has happened.”
“It will all pass, it will all pass; we shall be so happy. Our love, if it could be
stronger, will be strengthened by there being something terrible in it,” he said, lifting
his head and parting his strong teeth in a smile.
And she could not but respond with a smile–not to his words, but to the love in
his eyes. She took his hand and stroked her chilled cheeks and cropped head with it.
“I don’t know you with this short hair. You’ve grown so pretty. A boy. But how
pale you are!”
“Yes, I’m very weak,” she said, smiling. And her lips began trembling again.
“We’ll go to Italy; you will get strong,” he said.
“Can it be possible we could be like husband and wife, alone, your family with
you?” she said, looking close into his eyes.
“It only seems strange to me that it can ever have been otherwise.”
“Stiva says that he has agreed to everything, but I can’t accept his generosity,” she
said, looking dreamily past Vronsky’s face. “I don’t want a divorce; it’s all the same
to me now. Only I don’t know what he will decide about Seryozha.”
He could not conceive how at this moment of their meeting she could remember
and think of her son, of divorce. What did it all matter?
“Don’t speak of that, don’t think of it,” he said, turning her hand in his, and trying
to draw her attention to him; but still she did not look at him.
“Oh, why didn’t I die! it would have been better,” she said, and silent tears flowed
down both her cheeks; but she tried to smile, so as not to wound him.
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