Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART SEVEN CHAPTER 26
the shadow of the screen wavered, pounced on the whole cornice, the whole ceiling;
other shadows from the other side swooped to meet it, for an instant the shadows
flitted back, but then with fresh swiftness they darted forward, wavered, commingled,
and all was darkness. “Death!” she thought. And such horror came upon her
that for a long while she could not realize where she was, and for a long while her
trembling hands could not find the matches and light another candle, instead of the
one that had burned down and gone out. “No, anything–only to live! Why, I love
him! Why, he loves me! This has been before and will pass,” she said, feeling that
tears of joy at the return to life were trickling down her cheeks. And to escape from
her panic she went hurriedly to his room.
He was asleep there, and sleeping soundly. She went up to him, and holding the
light above his face, she gazed a long while at him. Now when he was asleep, she
loved him so that at the sight of him she could not keep back tears of tenderness. But
she knew that if he waked up he would look at her with cold eyes, convinced that
he was right, and that before telling him of her love, she would have to prove to him
that he had been wrong in his treatment of her. Without waking him, she went back,
and after a second dose of opium she fell towards morning into a heavy, incomplete
sleep, during which she never quite lost consciousness.
In the morning she was waked by a horrible nightmare, which had recurred several
times in her dreams, even before her connection with Vronsky. A little old man
with unkempt beard was doing something bent down over some iron, muttering
meaningless French words, and she, as she always did in this nightmare (it was
what made the horror of it), felt that this peasant was taking no notice of her, but
was doing something horrible with the iron– over her. And she waked up in a cold
sweat.
When she got up, the previous day came back to her as though veiled in mist.
“There was a quarrel. Just what has happened several times. I said I had a
headache, and he did not come in to see me. Tomorrow we’re going away; I must
see him and get ready for the journey,” she said to herself. And learning that he was
in his study, she went down to him. As she passed through the drawing room she
heard a carriage stop at the entrance, and looking out of the window she saw the carriage,
from which a young girl in a lilac hat was leaning out giving some direction
to the footman ringing the bell. After a parley in the hall, someone came upstairs,
and Vronsky’s steps could be heard passing the drawing room. He went rapidly
downstairs. Anna went again to the window. She saw him come out onto the steps
without his hat and go up to the carriage. The young girl in the lilac hat handed him
a parcel. Vronsky, smiling, said something to her. The carriage drove away, he ran
rapidly upstairs again.
The mists that had shrouded everything in her soul parted suddenly. The feelings
of yesterday pierced the sick heart with a fresh pang. She could not understand now
how she could have lowered herself by spending a whole day with him in his house.
She went into his room to announce her determination.
“That was Madame Sorokina and her daughter. They came and brought me the
money and the deeds from maman. I couldn’t get them yesterday. How is your
head, better?” he said quietly, not wishing to see and to understand the gloomy and
solemn expression of her face.
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