It was already dark. Alone, waiting for him to come back from a bachelors’ dinner he had gone to, Anna paced up and down his study (the room where the noise of the street was heard least) and mentally went through the nuances of yesterday’s quarrel in all their detail. Going further back from the memorably insulting words of the argument to what had caused them, she finally came to the beginning of their conversation. For a long time she could not believe that the quarrel had begun from such a harmless conversation, not close to either of their hearts. Yet it was really so. It had all begun with him laughing at women’s high schools, which he considered unnecessary, and her defending them. He referred disrespectfully to women’s education in general and said that Hannah, Anna’s English protégée, did not need any knowledge of physics.
That irritated Anna. She saw it as a contemptuous allusion to her concerns. And she devised and spoke a phrase that would pay him back for the pain he had caused her.
‘I don’t expect you to be mindful of me or my feelings as a loving man would be, but I do expect simple tactfulness,’ she said.
And indeed he turned red with vexation and said something unpleasant. She did not remember what reply she made to him, but only that he, obviously also wishing to cause her pain, responded by saying:
‘It’s true I’m not interested in your concern for this girl, because I can see it’s unnatural.’
The cruelty with which he destroyed the world she had so laboriously built up for herself in order to endure her difficult life, the unfairness with which he accused her of being false and unnatural, made her explode.
‘I am very sorry that only coarse and material things seem understandable and natural to you,’ she said and walked out of the room.
When he came to her that evening, they did not mention the quarrel that had taken place, but they both felt that, though it had been smoothed over, it was still there.
Today he had not been home all day, and she felt so lonely and so pained to have quarrelled with him that she wanted forget it all, to forgive and make peace with him, wanted to accuse herself and justify him.
‘It’s my own fault, I’m irritable, I’m senselessly jealous. I’ll make peace with him, we’ll leave for the country, I’ll be calmer there,’ she said to herself.
‘Unnatural’ - she suddenly remembered the most offensive thing, not the word so much as the intention to cause her pain.
‘I know what he wanted to say. He wanted to say that it’s unnatural for me to love someone else’s child when I don’t love my own daughter. What does he understand about the love for children, about my love for Seryozha, whom I have sacrificed for him? But this wish to cause me pain! No, he loves another woman, it can’t be anything else.’
And seeing that, while wishing to calm herself, she had gone round the circle she had already completed so many times and come back to her former irritation, she was horrified at herself. ‘Is it really impossible? Can I really not take it upon myself?’ she said to herself, and began again from the beginning. ‘He’s truthful, he’s honest, he loves me. I love him, the divorce will come any day now. What more do we need? We need peace, trust, and I’ll take it upon myself. Yes, now, when he comes, I’ll tell him it was my fault, though it wasn’t, and we’ll leave.’
And so as not to think any more and not to yield to irritation, she rang the bell and ordered the trunks to be brought in order to pack things for the country.
At ten o‘clock Vronsky arrived.
XXIV
‘So, did you have a good time?’ she asked, coming out to meet him with a guilty and meek expression on her face.
‘As usual,’ he replied, understanding at a glance that she was in one of her good moods. He had become used to these changes, and was especially glad of it today, because he himself was in the best of spirits.
‘What’s this I see! That’s good!’ he said, pointing to the trunks in the hallway.
‘Yes, we must leave. I went for a ride, and it’s so nice that I wanted to go to the country. Nothing’s keeping you?’
‘It’s my only wish. I’ll come at once and we’ll talk, I only have to change. Send for tea.’
And he went to his study.
There was something offensive in his saying ‘That’s good,’ as one speaks to a child when it stops misbehaving; still more offensive was the contrast between her guilty and his self-assured tone; and for a moment she felt a desire to fight rising in her; but, making an effort, she suppressed it and met Vronsky just as cheerfully.
When he came out to her, she told him, partly repeating words she had prepared, about her day and her plans for departure.
‘You know, it came to me almost like an inspiration,’ she said. ‘Why wait for the divorce here? Isn’t it the same in the country? I can’t wait any longer. I don’t want to hope, I don’t want to hear anything about the divorce. I’ve decided it’s no longer going to influence my life. Do you agree?’
‘Oh, yes!’ he said, looking uneasily into her excited face.
