Anna Karenina - LimpidSoft

PART EIGHT CHAPTER 5
And all at once a different pain, not an ache, but an inner trouble, that set his whole
being in anguish, made him for an instant forget his toothache. As he glanced at the
tender and the rails, under the influence of the conversation with a friend he had not
met since his misfortune, he suddenly recalled her–that is, what was left of her when
he had run like one distraught into the cloak room of the railway station–on the table,
shamelessly sprawling out among strangers, the bloodstained body so lately full of
life; the head unhurt dropping back with its weight of hair, and the curling tresses
about the temples, and the exquisite face, with red, half-opened mouth, the strange,
fixed expression, piteous on the lips and awful in the still open eyes, that seemed to
utter that fearful phrase–that he would be sorry for it–that she had said when they
were quarreling.
And he tried to think of her as she was when he met her the first time, at a railway
station too, mysterious, exquisite, loving, seeking and giving happiness, and not
cruelly revengeful as he remembered her on that last moment. He tried to recall his
best moments with her, but those moments were poisoned forever. He could only
think of her as triumphant, successful in her menace of a wholly useless remorse
never to be effaced. He lost all consciousness of toothache, and his face worked with
sobs.
Passing twice up and down beside the baggage in silence and regaining his selfpossession,
he addressed Sergey Ivanovitch calmly:
“You have had no telegrams since yesterday’s? Yes, driven back for a third time,
but a decisive engagement expected for tomorrow.”
And after talking a little more of King Milan’s proclamation, and the immense
effect it might have, they parted, going to their carriages on hearing the second bell.
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