Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART ONE CHAPTER 19
suspecting infidelity, I regarded it as impossible, and then– try to imagine it–with
such ideas, to find out suddenly all the horror, all the loathsomeness.... You must
try and understand me. To be fully convinced of one’s happiness, and all at once...”
continued Dolly, holding back her sobs, “to get a letter...his letter to his mistress, my
governess. No, it’s too awful!” She hastily pulled out her handkerchief and hid her
face in it. “I can understand being carried away by feeling,” she went on after a brief
silence, “but deliberately, slyly deceiving me...and with whom?... To go on being my
husband together with her...it’s awful! You can’t understand...”
“Oh, yes, I understand! I understand! Dolly, dearest, I do understand,” said Anna,
pressing her hand.
“And do you imagine he realizes all the awfulness of my position?” Dolly resumed.
“Not the slightest! He’s happy and contented.”
“Oh, no!” Anna interposed quickly. “He’s to be pitied, he’s weighed down by
remorse...”
“Is he capable of remorse?” Dolly interrupted, gazing intently into her sister-inlaw’s
face.
“Yes. I know him. I could not look at him without feeling sorry for him. We both
know him. He’s good-hearted, but he’s proud, and now he’s so humiliated. What
touched me most...” (and here Anna guessed what would touch Dolly most) “he’s
tortured by two things: that he’s ashamed for the children’s sake, and that, loving
you–yes, yes, loving you beyond everything on earth,” she hurriedly interrupted
Dolly, who would have answered–”he has hurt you, pierced you to the heart. ‘No,
no, she cannot forgive me,’ he keeps saying.”
Dolly looked dreamily away beyond her sister-in-law as she listened to her words.
“Yes, I can see that his position is awful; it’s worse for the guilty than the innocent,”
she said, “if he feels that all the misery comes from his fault. But how am I to forgive
him, how am I to be his wife again after her? For me to live with him now would be
torture, just because I love my past love for him...”
And sobs cut short her words. But as though of set design, each time she was
softened she began to speak again of what exasperated her.
“She’s young, you see, she’s pretty,” she went on. “Do you know, Anna, my youth
and my beauty are gone, taken by whom? By him and his children. I have worked
for him, and all I had has gone in his service, and now of course any fresh, vulgar
creature has more charm for him. No doubt they talked of me together, or, worse
still, they were silent. Do you understand?”
Again her eyes glowed with hatred.
“And after that he will tell me.... What! can I believe him? Never! No, everything
is over, everything that once made my comfort, the reward of my work, and my
sufferings.... Would you believe it, I was teaching Grisha just now: once this was a
joy to me, now it is a torture. What have I to strive and toil for? Why are the children
here? What’s so awful is that all at once my heart’s turned, and instead of love and
tenderness, I have nothing but hatred for him; yes, hatred. I could kill him.”
“Darling Dolly, I understand, but don’t torture yourself. You are so distressed, so
overwrought, that you look at many things mistakenly.”
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