‘But you’re unwell or upset,’ he went on, without letting go of her hand and bending over her. ‘What were you thinking about?’
‘Always the same thing,’ she said with a smile.
She was telling the truth. Whenever, at whatever moment, she might be asked what she was thinking about, she could answer without mistake: about the same thing, about her happiness and her unhappiness. Precisely now, when he found her, she had been thinking about why it was all so easy for others - Betsy, for instance (she knew of her liaison with Tushkevich, concealed from society) - while for her it was so painful? That day, owing to certain considerations, this thought was particularly painful for her. She asked him about the races. He answered her and, seeing that she was excited, tried to divert her by describing in the simplest tone the details of the preparation for the races.
‘Shall I tell him or not?’ she thought, looking into his calm, tender eyes. ‘He’s so happy, so taken up with his races, that he won’t understand it as he should, won’t understand all the significance of this event for us.’
‘But you haven’t told me what you were thinking about when I came,’ he said, interrupting his account. ‘Please tell me!’
She did not answer and, bowing her head slightly, looked at him questioningly from under her brows, her eyes shining behind their long lashes. Her hand, playing with a plucked leaf, was trembling. He saw it, and his face showed that obedience, that slavish devotion, which touched her so.
‘I see that something has happened. Can I be calm for a moment, knowing you have a grief that I don’t share? Tell me, for God’s sake!’ he repeated pleadingly.
‘No, I will never forgive him if he doesn’t understand all the significance of it. Better not to tell. Why test him?’ she thought, gazing at him in the same way and feeling that her hand holding the leaf was trembling more and more.
‘For God’s sake!’ he repeated, taking her hand.
‘Shall I tell you?’
‘Yes, yes, yes ...’
‘I’m pregnant,’ she said softly and slowly.
The leaf in her hand trembled still more violently, but she did not take her eyes off him, wanting to see how he would take it. He paled, was about to say something, but stopped, let go of her hand and hung his head. ‘Yes, he understands all the significance of this event,’ she thought, and gratefully pressed his hand.
But she was mistaken in thinking that he understood the significance of the news as she, a woman, understood it. At this news he felt with tenfold force an attack of that strange feeling of loathing for someone that had been coming over him; but along with that he understood that the crisis he desired had now come, that it was no longer possible to conceal it from her husband and in one way or another this unnatural situation had to be broken up quickly. Besides that, her excitement communicated itself physically to him. He gave her a tender, obedient look, kissed her hand, rose and silently paced the terrace.
‘Yes,’ he said, resolutely going up to her. ‘Neither of us has looked on our relation as a game, and now our fate is decided. It’s necessary to end,’ he said, looking around, ‘the lie we live in.’
‘End it? But end it how, Alexei?’ she said softly. She was calm now, and her face shone with a tender smile.
‘Leave your husband and unite our lives.’
‘They’re already united,’ she replied, barely audibly.
‘Yes, but completely, completely.’
‘But how, Alexei, teach me how?’ she said with sad mockery at the hopelessness of her situation. ‘Is there a way out of such a situation? Am I not my husband’s wife?’
‘There’s a way out of every situation. A decision has to be made,’ he said. ‘Anything’s better than the situation you are living in. I can see how you suffer over everything, over society, and your son, and your husband.’
‘Ah, only not my husband,’ she said with a simple smile. ‘I don’t know him, I don’t think about him. He doesn’t exist.’
‘You’re not speaking sincerely. I know you. You suffer over him, too.’
‘But he doesn’t even know,’ she said, and bright colour suddenly began to rise in her face; her cheeks, forehead, and neck turned red, and tears of shame welled up in her eyes. ‘And let’s not talk about him.’
XXIII
Vronsky had already tried several times, though not as resolutely as now, to bring her to a discussion of her situation, and each time had run into that superficiality and lightness of judgement with which she now responded to his challenge. It was as if there were something in it that she could not or would not grasp, as if the moment she began talking about it, she, the real Anna, withdrew somewhere into herself and another woman stepped forward, strange and alien to him, whom he did not love but feared, and who rebuffed him. But today he ventured to say everything.
‘Whether he knows or not,’ Vronsky said in his usual firm and calm tone, ‘whether he knows or not is not our affair. We can’t ... you can’t go on like this, especially now.’
