Anna Karenina | Page 9

his wife, he
could hope that she would come round, as Matvey expressed it, and
could quietly go on reading his paper and drinking his coffee; but when
he saw her tortured, suffering face, heard the tone of her voice,
submissive to fate and full of despair, there was a catch in his breath
and a lump in his throat, and his eyes began to shine with tears.
"My God! what have I done? Dolly! For God's sake!.... You know...."
He could not go on; there was a sob in his throat.
She shut the bureau with a slam, and glanced at him.
"Dolly, what can I say?.... One thing: forgive...Remember, cannot nine
years of my life atone for an instant...."
She dropped her eyes and listened, expecting what he would say, as it
were beseeching him in some way or other to make her believe
differently.
"--instant of passion?" he said, and would have gone on, but at that
word, as at a pang of physical pain, her lips stiffened again, and again
the muscles of her right cheek worked.
"Go away, go out of the room!" she shrieked still more shrilly, "and
don't talk to me of your passion and your loathsomeness."
She tried to go out, but tottered, and clung to the back of a chair to
support herself. His face relaxed, his lips swelled, his eyes were
swimming with tears.
"Dolly!" he said, sobbing now; "for mercy's sake, think of the children;
they are not to blame! I am to blame, and punish me, make me expiate
my fault. Anything I can do, I am ready to do anything! I am to blame,

no words can express how much I am to blame! But, Dolly, forgive
me!"
She sat down. He listened to her hard, heavy breathing, and he was
unutterably sorry for her. She tried several times to begin to speak, but
could not. He waited.
"You remember the children, Stiva, to play with them; but I remember
them, and know that this means their ruin," she said--obviously one of
the phrases she had more than once repeated to herself in the course of
the last few days.
She had called him "Stiva," and he glanced at her with gratitude, and
moved to take her hand, but she drew back from him with aversion.
"I think of the children, and for that reason I would do anything in the
world to save them, but I don't myself know how to save them. by
taking them away from their father, or by leaving them with a vicious
father--yes, a vicious father.... Tell me, after what...has happened, can
we live together? Is that possible? Tell me, eh, is it possible?" she
repeated, raising her voice, "after my husband, the father of my
children, enters into a love affair with his own children's governess?"
"But what could I do? what could I do?" he kept saying in a pitiful
voice, not knowing what he was saying, as his head sank lower and
lower.
"You are loathsome to me, repulsive!" she shrieked, getting more and
more heated. "Your tears mean nothing! You have never loved me; you
have neither heart nor honorable feeling! You are hateful to me,
disgusting, a stranger--yes, a complete stranger!" With pain and wrath
she uttered the word so terrible to herself--stranger.
He looked at her, and the fury expressed in her face alarmed and
amazed him. He did not understand how his pity for her exasperated
her. She saw in him sympathy for her, but not love. "No, she hates me.
She will not forgive me," he thought.

"It is awful! awful!" he said.
At that moment in the next room a child began to cry; probably it had
fallen down. Darya Alexandrovna listened, and her face suddenly
softened.
She seemed to be pulling herself together for a few seconds, as though
she did not know where she was, and what she was doing, and getting
up rapidly, she moved towards the door.
"Well, she loves my child," he thought, noticing the change of her face
at the child's cry, "my child: how can she hate me?"
"Dolly, one word more," he said, following her.
"If you come near me, I will call in the servants, the children! They
may all know you are a scoundrel! I am going away at once, and you
may live here with your mistress!"
And she went out, slamming the door.
Stepan Arkadyevitch sighed, wiped his face, and with a subdued tread
walked out of the room. "Matvey says she will come round; but how? I
don't see the least chance of it. Ah, oh, how horrible it is! And how
vulgarly she shouted," he said to himself, remembering her shriek and
the words--"scoundrel" and "mistress." "And very likely the