Page 26 - Ext. Listening Reading_Neat
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husband, her children, and all the from her hands without a word, and feel
household in which I was so loved and at that minute that she was near me, that
trusted. Would it be honourable? She she was mine, that we could not live
would go away with me, but where? Where without each other; but by some strange
could I take her? It would have been a misunderstanding, when we came out of
different matter if I had had a beautiful, the theatre we always said good-bye and
interesting life -- if, for instance, parted as though we were strangers.
Goodness knows what people were saying
I had been struggling for the emancipation about us in the town already, but there
of my country, or had been a celebrated was not a word of truth in it all!
man of science, an artist or a painter; but
as it was it would mean taking her from "In the latter years Anna Alexyevna took to
one everyday humdrum life to another as going away for frequent visits to her
humdrum or perhaps more so. And how mother or to her sister; she began to
long would our happiness last? What suffer from low spirits, she began to
would happen to her in case I was ill, in recognize that her life was spoilt and
case I died, or if we simply grew cold to unsatisfied, and at times she did not care
one another? to see her husband nor her children. She
was already being treated for
"And she apparently reasoned in the same neurasthenia.
way. She thought of her husband, her
children, and of her mother, who loved the "We were silent and still silent, and in the
husband like a son. If she abandoned presence of outsiders she displayed a
herself to her feelings she would have to strange irritation in regard to me;
lie, or else to tell the truth, and in her whatever I talked about, she disagreed
position either would have been equally with me, and if I had an argument she
terrible and inconvenient. And she was sided with my opponent. If I dropped
tormented by the question whether her anything, she would say coldly:
love would bring me happiness -- would
she not complicate my life, which, as it " 'I congratulate you.'
was, was hard enough and full of all sorts
of trouble? She fancied she was not young "If I forgot to take the opera-glass when we
enough for me, that she was not were going to the theatre, she would say
industrious nor energetic enough to begin afterwards:
a new life, and she often talked to her
husband of the importance of my " 'I knew you would forget it.'
marrying a girl of intelligence and merit
who would be a capable housewife and a "Luckily or unluckily, there is nothing in
help to me -- and she would immediately our lives that does not end sooner or later.
add that it would be difficult to find such The time of parting came, as Luganovitch
a girl in the whole town. was appointed president in one of the
western provinces. They had to sell their
"Meanwhile the years were passing. Anna furniture, their horses, their summer villa.
Alexyevna already had two children. When When they drove out to the villa, and
I arrived at the Luganovitchs' the servants afterwards looked back as they were going
smiled cordially, the children shouted that away, to look for the last time at the
Uncle Pavel Konstantinovitch had come, garden, at the green roof, every one was
and hung on my neck; every one was sad, and I realized that I had to say
overjoyed. They did not understand what goodbye not only to the villa. It was
was passing in my soul, and thought that arranged that at the end of August we
I, too, was happy. Every one looked on me should see Anna Alexyevna off to the
as a noble being. And grown-ups and Crimea, where the doctors were sending
children alike felt that a noble being was her, and that a little later Luganovitch and
walking about their rooms, and that gave the children would set off for the western
a peculiar charm to their manner towards province.
me, as though in my presence their life,
too, was purer and more beautiful. Anna "We were a great crowd to see Anna Alexye
Alexyevna and I used to go to the theatre vna off. When she had said good-bye to
together, always walking there; we used to her husband and her children and there
sit side by side in the stalls, our shoulders was only a minute left before the third
touching. I would take the opera-glass bell, I ran into her compartment to put a
22| Extensive Listening & Reading
