Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SEVEN CHAPTER 24
“Stop! sto-op!” said Vronsky, with no change in the gloomy lines of his brows,
though he held her by the hand. “What is it all about? I said that we must put off
going for three days, and on that you told me I was lying, that I was not an honorable
man.”
“Yes, and I repeat that the man who reproaches me with having sacrificed everything
for me,” she said, recalling the words of a still earlier quarrel, “that he’s worse
than a dishonorable man– he’s a heartless man.”
“Oh, there are limits to endurance!” he cried, and hastily let go her hand.
“He hates me, that’s clear,” she thought, and in silence, without looking round,
she walked with faltering steps out of the room. “He loves another woman, that’s
even clearer,” she said to herself as she went into her own room. “I want love, and
there is none. So, then, all is over.” She repeated the words she had said, “and it
must be ended.”
“But how?” she asked herself, and she sat down in a low chair before the looking
glass.
Thoughts of where she would go now, whether to the aunt who had brought her
up, to Dolly, or simply alone abroad, and of what he was doing now alone in his
study; whether this was the final quarrel, or whether reconciliation were still possible;
and of what all her old friends at Petersburg would say of her now; and of
how Alexey Alexandrovitch would look at it, and many other ideas of what would
happen now after this rupture, came into her head; but she did not give herself up to
them with all her heart. At the bottom of her heart was some obscure idea that alone
interested her, but she could not get clear sight of it. Thinking once more of Alexey
Alexandrovitch, she recalled the time of her illness after her confinement, and the
feeling which never left her at that time. “Why didn’t I die?” and the words and
the feeling of that time came back to her. And all at once she knew what was in her
soul. Yes, it was that idea which alone solved all. “Yes, to die!... And the shame and
disgrace of Alexey Alexandrovitch and of Seryozha, and my awful shame, it will all
be saved by death. To die! and he will feel remorse; will be sorry; will love me; he
will suffer on my account.” With the trace of a smile of commiseration for herself
she sat down in the armchair, taking off and putting on the rings on her left hand,
vividly picturing from different sides his feelings after her death.
Approaching footsteps–his steps–distracted her attention. As though absorbed in
the arrangement of her rings, she did not even turn to him.
He went up to her, and taking her by the hand, said softly:
“Anna, we’ll go the day after tomorrow, if you like. I agree to everything.”
She did not speak.
“What is it?” he urged.
“You know,” she said, and at the same instant, unable to restrain herself any
longer, she burst into sobs.
“Cast me off!” she articulated between her sobs. “I’ll go away tomorrow...I’ll do
more. What am I? An immoral woman! A stone round your neck. I don’t want to
make you wretched, I don’t want to! I’ll set you free. You don’t love me; you love
someone else!”
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