第317章

`I've never asked myself the question, Anna Arkadyevna, whether I'm sorry for him or not. You see, all my fortune's here' - he touched his breast pocket - `and just now I'm a wealthy man. But today I'm going to the club, and I may come out a beggar. You see, whoever sits down to play with me wants to leave me without a shirt to my back, and I wish the same to him. And so we fight it out, and that's the pleasure of it.'

`Well, but suppose you were married,' said Anna, `how would it be for your wife?'

Iashvin laughed.

`That's to all appearance why I'm not married, and never mean to be.'

`And Helsingfors?' said Vronsky, entering into the conversation and glancing at Anna's smiling face. Meeting his eyes, Anna's face instantly took a coldly severe expression as though she were saying to him: `It's not forgotten. It's all the same.'

`Were you really in love?' she said to Iashvin.

`Oh heavens! Ever so many times! But, you see, some men can play, but only so that they can always lay down their cards when the hour of a rendez-vous comes, while I can take up love, but only so as not to be late for my cards in the evening. That's how I manage things.'

`No, I didn't mean that, but the real thing.' She would have said Helsingfors, but would not repeat the word used by Vronsky.

Voitov, who was buying the horse, came in. Anna got up and went out of the room.

Before leaving the house, Vronsky went into her room. She would have pretended to be looking for something on the table, but ashamed of making a pretense, she looked straight in his face with cold eyes.

`What do you want?' she asked in French.

`To get the guarantee for Gambetta - I've sold him,' he said, in a tone which said more clearly than words, `I've no time for discussing things, and it would lead to nothing.'

`I'm not to blame in any way,' he thought. `If she will punish herself, tant pis pour elle .' But as he was going he fancied that she said something, and his heart suddenly ached with pity for her.

`Eh, Anna?' he queried.

`I said nothing,' she answered just as coldly and calmly.

`Oh, nothing, tant pis then,' he thought, feeling cold again, and he turned and went out. As he was going out he caught a glimpse in the looking glass of her face, white, with quivering lips. He even wanted to stop and to say some comforting word to her, but his legs carried him out of the room before he could think what to say. The whole of that day he spent away from home, and when he came in late in the evening the maid told him that Anna Arkadyevna had a headache and begged him not to go in to her.

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TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 7, Chapter 26[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 26 Never before had a day been passed in quarrel. Today was the first time.

And this was not a quarrel. It was the open acknowledgment of complete coldness. Was it possible to glance at her as he had glanced when he came into the room for the guarantee? - to look at her, see her heart was breaking with despair, and go out without a word with that face of callous composure?

He was not merely cold to her, he hated her because he loved another woman - that was clear.

And remembering all the cruel words he had said, Anna supplied, too, the words that he had unmistakably wished to say and could have said to her, and she grew more and more exasperated.

`I won't prevent you,' he might say. `You can go where you like.

You were unwilling to be divorced from your husband, no doubt so that you might go back to him. Go back to him. If you want money, I'll give it to you. How many roubles do you want?'

All the most cruel words that a brutal man could say, he said to her in her imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as though he had actually said them.

`But didn't he only yesterday swear he loved me, he, a truthful and sincere man? Haven't I despaired for nothing many times already?' she said to herself right after this.

All that day, except for the visit to Wilson's, which occupied two hours, Anna spent in doubts whether everything were over or whether there were still hope of reconciliation; whether she should go away at once or see him once more. She was expecting him the whole day, and in the evening, as she went to her own room, leaving a message for him that her head ached, she said to herself, `If he comes in spite of what the maid says, it means that he loves me still. If not, it means that all is over, and then I will decide what I am to do!...'

In the evening she heard the rumbling of his carriage stop at the entrance, his ring, his steps, and his conversation with the servant;he believed what was told him, did not care to find out more, and went to his own room. So then, everything was at an end.

And death rose clearly and vividly before her mind as the sole means of bringing back love for her in his heart, of punishing him and of gaining the victory in that strife which the evil spirit in possession of her heart was waging with him.

Now nothing mattered: going or not going to Vozdvizhenskoe, getting or not getting a divorce from her husband - all that did not matter. The one thing that mattered was punishing him.

When she poured herself out her usual dose of opium, and thought that she had only to drink off the whole bottle to die, it seemed to her so simple and easy, that she began musing with enjoyment on how he would suffer, and repent, and love her memory when it would be too late. She lay in bed with open eyes, by the light of a single guttering candle, gazing at the carved cornice of the ceiling and at the shadow of the screen that covered part of it, while she vividly pictured to herself how he would feel when she would be no more, when she would be only a memory to him.

`How could I say such cruel things to her?' he would say. `How could Igo out of the room without saying anything to her? But now she is no more.