Anna Karenina

was six o’clock already, and so, in order to be there quickly, and
at the same time not to drive with his own horses, known to everyone,
Vronsky got into Yashvin’s hired fly, and told the driver to drive as
quickly as possible. It was a roomy, old-fashioned fly, with seats for
four. He sat in one corner, stretched his legs out on the front seat,
and sank into meditation.

A vague sense of the order into which his affairs had been brought, a
vague recollection of the friendliness and flattery of Serpuhovskoy,
who had considered him a man that was needed, and most of all, the
anticipation of the interview before him—all blended into a general,
joyous sense of life. This feeling was so strong that he could not help
smiling. He dropped his legs, crossed one leg over the other knee, and
taking it in his hand, felt the springy muscle of the calf, where it
had been grazed the day before by his fall, and leaning back he drew
several deep breaths.

“I’m happy, very happy!” he said to himself. He had often before had
this sense of physical joy in his own body, but he had never felt so
fond of himself, of his own body, as at that moment. He enjoyed the
slight ache in his strong leg, he enjoyed the muscular sensation of
movement in his chest as he breathed. The bright, cold August day,
which had made Anna feel so hopeless, seemed to him keenly stimulating,
and refreshed his face and neck that still tingled from the cold water.
The scent of brilliantine on his whiskers struck him as particularly
pleasant in the fresh air. Everything he saw from the carriage window,
everything in that cold pure air, in the pale light of the sunset, was
as fresh, and gay, and strong as he was himself: the roofs of the
houses shining in the rays of the setting sun, the sharp outlines of
fences and angles of buildings, the figures of passers-by, the
carriages that met him now and then, the motionless green of the trees
and grass, the fields with evenly drawn furrows of potatoes, and the
slanting shadows that fell from the houses, and trees, and bushes, and
even from the rows of potatoes—everything was bright like a pretty
landscape just finished and freshly varnished.

“Get on, get on!” he said to the driver, putting his head out of the
window, and pulling a three-rouble note out of his pocket he handed it
to the man as he looked round. The driver’s hand fumbled with something
at the lamp, the whip cracked, and the carriage rolled rapidly along
the smooth highroad.

“I want nothing, nothing but this happiness,” he thought, staring at
the bone button of the bell in the space between the windows, and
picturing to himself Anna just as he had seen her last time. “And as I
go on, I love her more and more. Here’s the garden of the Vrede Villa.
Whereabouts will she be? Where? How? Why did she fix on this place to
meet me, and why does she write in Betsy’s letter?” he thought,
wondering now for the first time at it. But there was now no time for
wonder. He called to the driver to stop before reaching the avenue, and
opening the door, jumped out of the carriage as it was moving, and went
into the avenue that led up to the house. There was no one in the
avenue; but looking round to the right he caught sight of her. Her face
was hidden by a veil, but he drank in with glad eyes the special
movement in walking, peculiar to her alone, the slope of the shoulders,
and the setting of the head, and at once a sort of electric shock ran
all over him. With fresh force, he felt conscious of himself from the
springy motions of his legs to the movements of his lungs as he
breathed, and something set his lips twitching.

Joining him, she pressed his hand tightly.

“You’re not angry that I sent for you? I absolutely had to see you,”
she said; and the serious and set line of her lips, which he saw under
the veil, transformed his mood at once.

“I angry! But how have you come, where from?”

“Never mind,” she said, laying her hand on his, “come along, I must
talk to you.”

He saw that something had happened, and that the interview would not be
a joyous one. In her presence he had no will of his own: without
knowing the grounds of her distress, he already felt the same distress
unconsciously passing over him.

“What is it? what?” he asked her, squeezing her hand with his elbow,
and trying to read her thoughts in her face.

She walked on a few steps in silence, gathering up her courage; then
suddenly she stopped.

“I did not tell you yesterday,” she began, breathing quickly and
painfully, “that coming home with Alexey Alexandrovitch I told him
everything ... told him I could not be his wife, that ... and told him
everything.”

He heard her, unconsciously bending his whole figure down to her as
though hoping in this way to soften the hardness of her position for
her. But directly she had said this he suddenly drew himself up, and a
proud and hard expression came over his face.

“Yes, yes, that’s better, a thousand times better! I know how painful
it was,” he said. But she was not listening to his words, she was
reading his thoughts from the expression of his face. She could not
guess that that expression arose from the first idea that presented
itself to Vronsky—that a duel was now inevitable. The idea of a duel
had never crossed her mind, and so she put a different interpretation
on this passing expression of hardness.

When she got her husband’s letter, she knew then at the bottom of her
heart that everything would go on in the old way, that she would not
have the strength of will to forego her position, to abandon her son,
and to join her lover. The morning spent at Princess Tverskaya’s had
confirmed her still more in this. But this interview was still of the
utmost gravity for her. She hoped that this interview would transform
her position, and save her. If on hearing this news he were to say to
her resolutely, passionately, without an instant’s wavering: “Throw up
everything and come with me!” she would give up her son and go away
with him. But this news had not produced what she had expected in him;
he simply seemed as though he were resenting some affront.

“It was not in the least painful to me. It happened of itself,” she
said irritably; “and see....” she pulled her husband’s letter out of
her glove.

“I understand, I understand,” he interrupted her, taking the letter,
but not reading it, and trying to soothe her. “The one thing I longed
for, the one thing I prayed for, was to cut short this position, so as
to devote my life to your happiness.”

“Why do you tell me that?” she said. “Do you suppose I can doubt it? If
I doubted....”

“Who’s that coming?” said Vronsky suddenly, pointing to two ladies
walking towards them. “Perhaps they know us!” and he hurriedly turned
off, drawing her after him into a side path.

“Oh, I don’t care!” she said. Her lips were quivering. And he fancied
that her eyes looked with strange fury at him from under the veil. “I
tell you that’s not the point—I can’t doubt that; but see what he
writes to me. Read it.” She stood still again.

Again, just as at the first moment of hearing of her rupture with her
husband, Vronsky, on reading the letter, was unconsciously carried away
by the natural sensation aroused in him by his own relation to the
betrayed husband. Now while he held his letter in his hands, he could
not help picturing the challenge, which he would most likely find at
home today or tomorrow, and the duel itself, in which, with the same
cold and haughty expression that his face was assuming at this moment
he would await the injured husband’s shot, after having himself fired
into the air. And at that instant there flashed across his mind the
thought of what Serpuhovskoy had just said to him, and what he had
himself been thinking in the morning—that it was better not to bind
himself—and he knew that this thought he could not tell her.

Having read the letter, he raised his eyes to her, and there was no
determination in them. She saw at once that he had been thinking about
it before by himself. She knew that whatever he might say to her, he
would not say all he thought. And she knew that her last hope had
failed her. This was not what she had been reckoning on.

“You see the sort of man he is,” she said, with a shaking voice;
“he....”

“Forgive me, but I rejoice at it,” Vronsky interrupted. “For God’s
sake, let me finish!” he added, his eyes imploring her to give him time
to explain his words. “I rejoice, because things cannot, cannot
possibly remain as he supposes.”

“Why can’t they?” Anna said, restraining her tears, and obviously
attaching no sort of consequence to what he said. She felt that her
fate was sealed.

Vronsky meant that after the duel—inevitable, he thought—things could
not go on as before, but he said something different.

“It can’t go on. I hope that now you will leave him. I hope”—he was
confused, and reddened—“that you will let me arrange and plan our life.
Tomorrow....” he was beginning.

She did not let him go on.

“But my child!” she shrieked. “You see what he writes! I should have to
leave him, and I can’t and won’t do that.”

“But, for God’s sake, which is better?—leave your child, or keep up
this degrading position?”

“To whom is it degrading?”

“To all, and most of all to you.”

“You say degrading ... don’t say that. Those words have no meaning for
me,” she said in a shaking voice. She did not want him now to say what
was untrue. She had nothing left her but his love, and she wanted to
love him. “Don’t you understand that from the day I loved you
everything has changed for me? For me there is one thing, and one thing
only—your love. If that’s mine, I feel so exalted, so strong, that
nothing can be humiliating to me. I am proud of my position, because
... proud of being ... proud....” She could not say what she was proud
of. Tears of shame and despair choked her utterance. She stood still
and sobbed.

He felt, too, something swelling in his throat and twitching in his
nose, and for the first time in his life he felt on the point of
weeping. He could not have said exactly what it was touched him so. He
felt sorry for her, and he felt he could not help her, and with that he
knew that he was to blame for her wretchedness, and that he had done
something wrong.

“Is not a divorce possible?” he said feebly. She shook her head, not
answering. “Couldn’t you take your son, and still leave him?”

“Yes; but it all depends on him. Now I must go to him,” she said
shortly. Her presentiment that all would again go on in the old way had
not deceived her.

“On Tuesday I shall be in Petersburg, and everything can be settled.”

“Yes,” she said. “But don’t let us talk any more of it.”

Anna’s carriage, which she had sent away, and ordered to come back to
the little gate of the Vrede garden, drove up. Anna said good-bye to
Vronsky, and drove home.