‘ “You yourself can imagine what awaits you and your son”,’ she recalled the words of the letter. ‘That’s a threat that he’ll take my son away, and according to their stupid law he can probably do it. But don’t I know why he says it? He doesn’t believe in my love for my son either, or else he despises (how he always did snigger at it), he despises this feeling of mine, but he knows that I won’t abandon my son, I cannot abandon my son, that without my son there can be no life for me even with the one I love, but that if I abandon my son and run away from him, I’ll be acting like the most disgraceful, vile woman - he knows that and knows I wouldn’t be able to do it.
‘“Our life must go on as before”,’she recalled another phrase from the letter. ‘That life was a torment even before, it has been terrible recently. What will it be now? And he knows it all, he knows that I cannot repent that I breathe, that I love; he knows that, except for lies and deceit, there will be nothing in it; yet he must go on tormenting me. I know him, I know that he swims and delights in lies like a fish in water. But no, I won’t give him that delight, I’ll tear apart this web of lies he wants to wrap around me, come what may. Anything is better than lies and deceit!
‘But how? My God! My God! Was any woman ever as unhappy as I am?...
‘No, I’ll tear it, I’ll tear it apart!’ she cried out, jumping up and forcing back her tears. And she went to the desk in order to write him another letter. But in the depths of her soul she already sensed that she would be unable to tear anything apart, unable to get out of her former situation, however false and dishonest it was.
She sat down at the desk but, instead of writing, she folded her arms on it, put her head on them, and wept, sobbing and heaving her whole breast, the way children weep. She wept that her dream of clarifying, of defining her situation was destroyed for ever. She knew beforehand that everything would stay as it had been, and would even be far worse than it had been. She felt that the position she enjoyed in society, which had seemed so insignificant to her in the morning, was precious to her, and that she would not be able to exchange it for the shameful position of a woman who has abandoned her husband and son and joined her lover; that, try as she might, she could not be stronger than she was. She would never experience the freedom of love, but would forever remain a criminal wife, under threat of exposure every moment, deceiving her husband for the sake of a disgraceful affair with another, an independent man, with whom she could not live a life as one. She knew that this was how it would be, and at the same time it was so terrible that she could not even imagine how it would end. And she wept without restraint, as punished children weep.
The sound of the footman’s steps brought her back to herself and, hiding her face from him, she pretended to be writing.
‘The courier is asking for the reply,’ the footman reported.
‘Reply? Yes,’ said Anna, ‘have him wait. I’ll ring.’
‘What can I write?’ she thought. ‘What can I decide alone? What do I know? What do I want? What do I love?’ Again she felt that things had begun to go double in her soul. She became frightened at this feeling and seized on the first pretext for action that came to her, to distract her from thoughts of herself. ‘I must see Alexei’ (so she called Vronsky in her mind), ‘he alone can tell me what I must do. I’ll go to Betsy: maybe I’ll see him there,’ she said to herself, completely forgetting that just yesterday, when she had told him that she would not go to Princess Tverskoy’s, he had said that in that case he would not go either. She went to the table, wrote to her husband: ‘I have received your letter. A.’ - rang and handed it to the footman.
‘We’re not going,’ she said to Annushka as she came in.
‘Not going at all?’
‘No, don’t unpack until tomorrow, and hold the carriage. I’m going to see the princess.’
‘What dress shall I prepare?’
XVII
The company at the croquet party to which Princess Tverskoy had invited Anna was to consist of two ladies with their admirers. These two ladies were the chief representatives of a select new Petersburg circle which, in imitation of an imitation of something, was called Les sept
Anna arrived at Princess Tverskoy’s earlier than the other guests.
