‘Varya!’ he said, looking sternly at her. ‘I shot myself accidentally. And please never speak of it and tell everybody the same. Otherwise it’s too stupid!’
Without replying to what he said, Varya leaned over him and looked into his face with a joyful smile. His eyes were clear, not feverish, but their expression was stern.
‘Well, thank God!’ she said. ‘Does it hurt anywhere?’
‘Here a little.’ He pointed to his chest.
‘Then let me change your bandage.’
Silently clenching his broad jaws, he gazed at her while she bandaged him. When she finished, he said:
‘I’m not delirious: please make sure there’s no talk of me shooting myself on purpose.’
‘But nobody says that. Only, I hope you won’t accidentally shoot yourself any more,’ she said with a questioning smile.
‘It must be that I won’t, though it would be better ...’
And he smiled gloomily.
Despite his words and smile, which frightened Varya so much, when the inflammation passed and he began to recover, he felt himself completely free of one part of his grief. By his act he had washed himself, as it were, of the shame and humiliation he had felt previously. He could think calmly now of Alexei Alexandrovich. He recognized all his magnanimity and no longer felt himself humiliated. Besides, he fell back into the old rut of his life. He saw the possibility of looking people in the eye without shame and could live under the guidance of his habits. The one thing he could not tear out of his heart, despite his constant struggle with this feeling, was the regret, reaching the point of despair, at having lost her for ever. That now, having redeemed his guilt before her husband, he had to renounce her and never again stand between her with her repentance and her husband, was firmly resolved in his heart; but he could not tear out of his heart the regret at the loss of her love, could not erase from his memory the moments of happiness he had known with her, which he had valued so little then and which now pursued him in all their enchantment.
Serpukhovskoy came up with an assignment for him in Tashkent, and Vronsky accepted the offer without the slightest hesitation. But the closer the time of departure came, the harder became the sacrifice he was offering to what he considered his duty.
His wound had healed and he was already up and about, making preparations for his departure for Tashkent.
‘To see her once and then burrow in and die,’ he thought and, while making his farewell visits, he voiced this thought to Betsy. With this mission Betsy went to Anna and brought him back a negative reply.
‘So much the better,’ thought Vronsky, on receiving the news. ‘This was a weakness that would have destroyed my last strength.’
The next day Betsy herself came to him in the morning and announced that she had received positive news through Oblonsky that Alexei Alexandrovich was granting a divorce and that he could therefore see her.
Without even bothering to see Betsy to the door, forgetting all his resolutions, not asking when it was possible or where the husband was, Vronsky went at once to the Karenins’. He raced up the stairs, seeing nothing and no one, and with quick strides, barely keeping himself from running, entered her room. And without thinking, without noticing whether there was anyone in the room, he embraced her and began covering her face, hands and neck with kisses.
Anna had been preparing for this meeting, she had thought of what she was going to tell him, but she did not manage to say any of it: his passion seized her. She wanted to calm him, to calm herself, but it was too late. His feeling communicated itself to her. Her lips trembled so that for a long time she could not say anything.
‘Yes, you possess me and I am yours,’ she finally got out, pressing his hand to her breast.
‘It had to be so!’ he said. ‘As long as we live, it must be so. I know it now.’
‘It’s true,’ she said, growing paler and paler and embracing his head. ‘Still, there’s something terrible in it, after all that’s happened.’
‘It will pass, it will all pass, we’ll be so happy! Our love, if it could possibly grow stronger, would grow stronger for having something terrible in it,’ he said, raising his head and revealing his strong teeth in a smile.
And she could not help responding with a smile - not to his words but to his enamoured eyes. She took his hand and stroked herself with it on her cold cheeks and cropped hair.
‘I don’t recognize you with this short hair. You’re so pretty. Like a boy. But how pale you are!’
‘Yes, I’m very weak,’ she said, smiling. And her lips trembled again.
‘We’ll go to Italy and you’ll get better,’ he said.
‘Is it really possible that we’ll be like husband and wife, alone, a family to ourselves?’ she said, peering into his eyes from close up.
‘I’m only surprised that it could ever have been otherwise.’
