第63章

When she came into the bedroom, he was already in bed. His lips were sternly compressed, and his eyes looked away from her. Anna got into her bed, and lay expecting every minute that he would begin to speak to her again. She both feared his speaking and wished for it. But he was silent.

She waited for a long while without moving, and forgot about him. She thought of that other; she pictured him, and felt how her heart was flooded with emotion and guilty delight at the thought of him. Suddenly she heard an even, tranquil snore. For the first instant Alexei Alexandrovich seemed, as it were, appalled at his own snoring, and ceased; but after a pause of one or two breaths, the snore sounded again, with a new tranquil rhythm.

`It's late, it's late,' she whispered with a smile. A long while she lay, without moving, and with open eyes, whose brilliance she almost fancied she could herself see in the darkness.

[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents]TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 2, Chapter 10[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 10 From that time a new life began for Alexei Alexandrovich and for his wife.

Nothing special happened. Anna went out into society, as she had always done, was particularly often at Princess Betsy's, and met Vronsky everywhere.

Alexei Alexandrovich saw this, but was powerless to do anything. All his efforts to draw her into open discussion she confronted with a barrier which he could not penetrate, made up of a sort of amused perplexity. Outwardly everything was the same, but their inner relations were completely changed.

Alexei Alexandrovich, a man of great power in the world of politics, felt himself helpless in this matter. Like an ox with head bent submissively, he waited the fall of the poleax which he felt was lifted over him. Every time he began to think about it, he felt that he must try once more; that by kindness, tenderness and persuasion there was still hope of saving her, of bringing her back to herself, and every day he was on the verge of talking to her. But every time he began he felt that the spirit of evil and deceit, which had taken possession of her, had possession of him too, and he talked to her in a tone quite unlike that which he had meant to use. Involuntarily he talked to her in his habitual tone of bantering at anyone who should say what he was saying. And in that tone it was impossible to say to her what the occasion demanded.

[Next Chapter] [Table of Contents]TOLSTOY: Anna Karenina Part 2, Chapter 11[Previous Chapter] [Table of Contents] Chapter 11 That which to Vronsky had been for almost a whole year the one absorbing desire of his life, replacing all his old desires; that which to Anna had been an impossible, terrible, and, for that very reason, a more entrancing dream of happiness - that desire had been fulfilled. He stood before her, pale, his lower jaw quivering, and besought her to be calm, without himself knowing how or why.

`Anna! Anna!' he said with a quivering voice, `Anna, for God's sake!...'

But the louder he spoke, the lower she cast down her once proud and gay, but now shame-stricken head, and she bowed down and sank from the sofa where she was sitting - down on the floor, at his feet; she would have fallen on the carpet if he had not held her.

`My God!' Forgive me!' she said, sobbing, pressing his hands to her bosom.

She felt so sinful, so guilty, that nothing was left her but to humiliate herself and beg forgiveness, and as now there was no one in her life but him, to him, too, she addressed her prayer for forgiveness. Looking at him, she had a physical sense of her humiliation, and she could say nothing more. And he felt as a murderer must feel when he beholds the body he has robbed of life. That body, robbed by him of life, was their love, the first stage of their love. There was something awful and revolting in the memory of what had been bought at this fearful price of shame. Shame at her spiritual nakedness crushed her and infected him. But in spite of all the murderer's horror before the body of his victim, he must hack it to pieces, hide the body, must use what the murderer had gained by his murder.

And as the murderer, with fury, and, as it were, with passion, falls on the body, and drags it, and hacks at it - so he covered her face and shoulders with kisses. She held his hand, and did not stir. Yes, these kisses - that is what has been bought by this shame. Yes, and this one hand, which will always be mine - the hand of my accomplice. She lifted up that hand and kissed it. He sank on his knees and tried to see her face;but she hid it, and said nothing. At last, as though making an effort over herself, she got up and pushed him away. Her face was still as beautiful, but it was only the more pitiful for that.

`All is over,' she said; `I have nothing but you. Remember that.'

`I can never forget what is my whole life. For one instant of this happiness...'

`Happiness!' she said with horror and loathing and her horror unconsciously infected him. `For God's sake, not a word, not a word more.'

She rose quickly and moved away from him.

`Not a word more,' she repeated, and with a look of chill despair, incomprehensible to him, she parted from him. She felt that at that moment she could not put into words the sense of shame, of rapture, and of horror at this stepping into a new life, and she did not want to speak of it, to vulgarize this feeling by inappropriate words. But later too, and the next day, and the day after, she still found no words in which she could express the complexity of those feelings; indeed, she could not even find thoughts in which she could clearly think out all that was in her soul.

She said to herself. `No, just now I can't think of it - later on, when I am calmer.' But this calm for thoughts never came; every time the thought rose of what she had done and what would happen to her, and what she ought to do, a horror came over her and she drove those thoughts away.

`Later, later,' she said, `when I am calmer.'