Anna Karenina полностью

‘But now it’s decided,’ said Anna, looking straight into Vronsky’s eyes, with a stare meant to tell him that he should not even think of the possibility of a reconciliation.

‘Aren’t you sorry for this poor Pevtsov?’ she went on talking with Yashvin.

‘I’ve never asked myself whether I’m sorry or not, Anna Arkadyevna. Just as in war you don’t ask whether you’re sorry or not. My whole fortune is here,’ he pointed to his side pocket, ‘and I’m a rich man now. But tonight I’ll go to the club and maybe leave it a beggar. The one who sits down with me also wants to leave me without a shirt, as I do him. So we struggle, and that’s where the pleasure lies.’

‘Well, and if you were married,’ said Anna, ‘how would your wife feel?’

Yashvin laughed.

‘That must be why I never married and never wanted to.’

‘And Helsingfors?’ said Vronsky, entering the conversation, and he glanced at the smiling Anna.

Meeting his glance, Anna’s face suddenly assumed a coldly stern expression, as if she were telling him: ‘It’s not forgotten. It’s as it was.’

‘Can you have been in love?’ she said to Yashvin.

‘Oh, Lord, more than once! But you see, one man can sit down to cards, but be able to get up when the time comes for a rendezvous. Whereas I can be busy with love, but not be late for a game in the evening. That’s how I arrange it.’

‘No, I’m not asking about that, but about the present.’ She was going to say ‘Helsingfors’, but did not want to say the word Vronsky had said.

Voitov came, the purchaser of the stallion. Anna got up and walked out.

Before leaving the house, Vronsky came to her room. She was about to pretend to be looking for something on the table but, ashamed of pretending, she looked straight into his face with cold eyes.

‘What do you want?’ she asked him in French.

‘Gambetta’s papers. I’ve sold him,’ he replied, in a tone that said more clearly than words, ‘I have no time to talk, and it gets us nowhere.’

‘I’m not guilty before her in anything,’ he thought. ‘If she wants to punish herself, tant pis pour elle.^,dr But, as he went out, he thought she said something, and his heart was suddenly shaken with compassion for her.

‘What, Anna?’ he asked.

‘Nothing,’ she replied in the same cold and calm voice.

‘If it’s nothing, then tant pis,’ he thought, growing cold again, and he turned and went out. As he was leaving, he saw her face in the mirror, pale, with trembling lips. He would have liked to stop and say something comforting to her, but his legs carried him out of the room before he could think of what to say. He spent the whole day away from home, and when he came back late in the evening, the maid told him that Anna Arkadyevna had a headache and asked him not to come to her.

XXVI

Never before had a quarrel lasted a whole day. This was the first time. And it was not a quarrel. It was an obvious admission of a complete cooling off. How could he look at her as he had when he came into the room to get the papers? Look at her, see that her heart was breaking with despair, and pass by silently with that calmly indifferent face? He had not simply cooled towards her, he hated her, because he loved another woman - that was clear.

And, remembering all the cruel words he had said, Anna also invented the words he obviously had wished to say and might have said to her, and she grew more and more irritated.

‘I am not holding you,’ he might have said. ‘You may go wherever you like. You probably did not want to divorce your husband so that you could go back to him. Go back, then. If you need money, I will give it to you. How many roubles do you need?’

All the cruellest words a coarse man could say, he said to her in her imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as if he had actually said them to her.

‘And wasn’t it only yesterday that he swore he loved me, he, a truthful and honest man? Haven’t I despaired uselessly many times before?’ she said to herself after that.

All that day, except for the visit to Mrs Wilson, which took two hours, Anna spent wondering whether everything was finished or there was hope of a reconciliation, and whether she ought to leave at once or see him one more time. She waited for him the whole day, and in the evening, going to her room and giving the order to tell him she had a headache, she thought, ‘If he comes in spite of what the maid says, it means he still loves me. If not, it means it’s all over, and then I’ll decide what to do! ...’

In the evening she heard the sound of his carriage stopping, his ring, his footsteps and conversation with the maid: he believed what he was told, did not want to find out any more, and went to his room. Therefore it was all over.

And death presented itself to her clearly and vividly as the only way to restore the love for her in his heart, to punish him and to be victorious in the struggle that the evil spirit lodged in her heart was waging with him.