‘Well, tell me, what must I do to set you at peace? I’m ready to do anything to make you happy,’ he said, moved by her despair. ‘There’s nothing I won’t do to deliver you from such grief as now, Anna!’ he said.
‘Never mind, never mind!’ she said. ‘I myself don’t know: maybe it’s the lonely life, nerves ... Well, let’s not speak of it. How was the race? You haven’t told me,’ she asked, trying to hide her triumph at the victory, which after all was on her side.
He asked for supper and began telling her the details of the race; but in his tone, in his eyes, which grew colder and colder, she saw that he did not forgive her the victory, that the feeling of obstinacy she had fought against was there in him again. He was colder to her than before, as if he repented of having given in. And, recalling the words that had given her the victory - ‘I’m close to terrible disaster and afraid of myself’ - she realized that this was a dangerous weapon and that she could not use it a second time. She felt that alongside the love that bound them, there had settled between them an evil spirit of some sort of struggle, which she could not drive out of his heart and still less out of her own.
XIII
There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that
At five o‘clock he was awakened by the creak of an opening door. He sat up and looked around. Kitty was not in bed beside him. But there was a light moving behind the partition, and he heard her steps.
‘What? ... What is it?’ he asked, half awake. ‘Kitty! What is it?’
‘Nothing,’ she said, coming from behind the partition with a candle in her hand. ‘Nothing. I wasn’t feeling well,’ she said, smiling with an especially sweet and meaningful smile.
‘What? It’s starting? Is it starting?’ he said fearfully. ‘We must send ...’ And he hastily began to get dressed.
‘No, no,’ she said, smiling and holding him back. ‘It’s probably nothing. I just felt slightly unwell. But it’s over now.’
And, coming to the bed, she put out the candle, lay down and was quiet. Though he was suspicious of that quietness, as if she were holding her breath, and most of all of the expression of special tenderness and excitement with which she had said ‘Nothing’ to him, as she came from behind the partition, he was so sleepy that he dozed off at once. Only later did he remember the quietness of her breathing and understand what had been going on in her dear, sweet soul while she lay beside him, without stirring, awaiting the greatest event in a woman’s life. At seven o’clock he was awakened by the touch of her hand on his shoulder and a soft whisper. It was as if she were struggling between being sorry to awaken him and the wish to speak to him.
‘Kostya, don’t be frightened. It’s nothing. But I think ... We must send for Lizaveta Petrovna.’
The candle was burning again. She was sitting on the bed holding her knitting, which she had busied herself with during the last few days.
‘Please don’t be frightened, it’s nothing. I’m not afraid at all,’ she said, seeing his frightened face, and she pressed his hand to her breast, then to her lips.
He hastily jumped out of bed, unaware of himself and not taking his eyes off her, put on his dressing gown, and stood there, still looking at her. He had to go, but he could not tear himself from her eyes. Not that he did not love her face and know her expression, her gaze, but he had never seen her like that. When he remembered how upset she had been yesterday, how vile and horrible he appeared to himself before her as she was now! Her flushed face, surrounded by soft hair coming from under her night-cap, shone with joy and resolution.
