Anna Karenina

lexey Alexandrovitch, after meeting Vronsky on his own steps, drove,
as he had intended, to the Italian opera. He sat through two acts
there, and saw everyone he had wanted to see. On returning home, he
carefully scrutinized the hat stand, and noticing that there was not a
military overcoat there, he went, as usual, to his own room. But,
contrary to his usual habit, he did not go to bed, he walked up and
down his study till three o’clock in the morning. The feeling of
furious anger with his wife, who would not observe the proprieties and
keep to the one stipulation he had laid on her, not to receive her
lover in her own home, gave him no peace. She had not complied with his
request, and he was bound to punish her and carry out his threat—obtain
a divorce and take away his son. He knew all the difficulties connected
with this course, but he had said he would do it, and now he must carry
out his threat. Countess Lidia Ivanovna had hinted that this was the
best way out of his position, and of late the obtaining of divorces had
been brought to such perfection that Alexey Alexandrovitch saw a
possibility of overcoming the formal difficulties. Misfortunes never
come singly, and the affairs of the reorganization of the native
tribes, and of the irrigation of the lands of the Zaraisky province,
had brought such official worries upon Alexey Alexandrovitch that he
had been of late in a continual condition of extreme irritability.

He did not sleep the whole night, and his fury, growing in a sort of
vast, arithmetical progression, reached its highest limits in the
morning. He dressed in haste, and as though carrying his cup full of
wrath, and fearing to spill any over, fearing to lose with his wrath
the energy necessary for the interview with his wife, he went into her
room directly he heard she was up.

Anna, who had thought she knew her husband so well, was amazed at his
appearance when he went in to her. His brow was lowering, and his eyes
stared darkly before him, avoiding her eyes; his mouth was tightly and
contemptuously shut. In his walk, in his gestures, in the sound of his
voice there was a determination and firmness such as his wife had never
seen in him. He went into her room, and without greeting her, walked
straight up to her writing-table, and taking her keys, opened a drawer.

“What do you want?” she cried.

“Your lover’s letters,” he said.

“They’re not here,” she said, shutting the drawer; but from that action
he saw he had guessed right, and roughly pushing away her hand, he
quickly snatched a portfolio in which he knew she used to put her most
important papers. She tried to pull the portfolio away, but he pushed
her back.

“Sit down! I have to speak to you,” he said, putting the portfolio
under his arm, and squeezing it so tightly with his elbow that his
shoulder stood up. Amazed and intimidated, she gazed at him in silence.

“I told you that I would not allow you to receive your lover in this
house.”

“I had to see him to....”

She stopped, not finding a reason.

“I do not enter into the details of why a woman wants to see her
lover.”

“I meant, I only....” she said, flushing hotly. This coarseness of his
angered her, and gave her courage. “Surely you must feel how easy it is
for you to insult me?” she said.

“An honest man and an honest woman may be insulted, but to tell a thief
he’s a thief is simply la constatation d’un fait.”

“This cruelty is something new I did not know in you.”

“You call it cruelty for a husband to give his wife liberty, giving her
the honorable protection of his name, simply on the condition of
observing the proprieties: is that cruelty?”

“It’s worse than cruel—it’s base, if you want to know!” Anna cried, in
a rush of hatred, and getting up, she was going away.

“No!” he shrieked, in his shrill voice, which pitched a note higher
than usual even, and his big hands clutching her by the arm so
violently that red marks were left from the bracelet he was squeezing,
he forcibly sat her down in her place.

“Base! If you care to use that word, what is base is to forsake husband
and child for a lover, while you eat your husband’s bread!”

She bowed her head. She did not say what she had said the evening
before to her lover, that he was her husband, and her husband was
superfluous; she did not even think that. She felt all the justice of
his words, and only said softly:

“You cannot describe my position as worse than I feel it to be myself;
but what are you saying all this for?”

“What am I saying it for? what for?” he went on, as angrily. “That you
may know that since you have not carried out my wishes in regard to
observing outward decorum, I will take measures to put an end to this
state of things.”

“Soon, very soon, it will end, anyway,” she said; and again, at the
thought of death near at hand and now desired, tears came into her
eyes.

“It will end sooner than you and your lover have planned! If you must
have the satisfaction of animal passion....”

“Alexey Alexandrovitch! I won’t say it’s not generous, but it’s not
like a gentleman to strike anyone who’s down.”

“Yes, you only think of yourself! But the sufferings of a man who was
your husband have no interest for you. You don’t care that his whole
life is ruined, that he is thuff ... thuff....”

Alexey Alexandrovitch was speaking so quickly that he stammered, and
was utterly unable to articulate the word “suffering.” In the end he
pronounced it “thuffering.” She wanted to laugh, and was immediately
ashamed that anything could amuse her at such a moment. And for the
first time, for an instant, she felt for him, put herself in his place,
and was sorry for him. But what could she say or do? Her head sank, and
she sat silent. He too was silent for some time, and then began
speaking in a frigid, less shrill voice, emphasizing random words that
had no special significance.

“I came to tell you....” he said.

She glanced at him. “No, it was my fancy,” she thought, recalling the
expression of his face when he stumbled over the word “suffering.” “No;
can a man with those dull eyes, with that self-satisfied complacency,
feel anything?”

“I cannot change anything,” she whispered.

“I have come to tell you that I am going tomorrow to Moscow, and shall
not return again to this house, and you will receive notice of what I
decide through the lawyer into whose hands I shall intrust the task of
getting a divorce. My son is going to my sister’s,” said Alexey
Alexandrovitch, with an effort recalling what he had meant to say about
his son.

“You take Seryozha to hurt me,” she said, looking at him from under her
brows. “You do not love him.... Leave me Seryozha!”

“Yes, I have lost even my affection for my son, because he is
associated with the repulsion I feel for you. But still I shall take
him. Good-bye!”

And he was going away, but now she detained him.

“Alexey Alexandrovitch, leave me Seryozha!” she whispered once more. “I
have nothing else to say. Leave Seryozha till my ... I shall soon be
confined; leave him!”

Alexey Alexandrovitch flew into a rage, and, snatching his hand from
her, he went out of the room without a word.