Page 1118 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

or will you let me know when and where I could see him
away from home? I do not anticipate a refusal, knowing
the magnanimity of him with whom it rests. You cannot
conceive the craving I have to see him, and so cannot

conceive the gratitude your help will arouse in me.
Anna.’
Everything in this letter exasperated Countess Lidia
Ivanovna: its contents and the allusion to magnanimity,
and especially its free and easy—as she considered—tone.
‘Say that there is no answer,’ said Countess Lidia
Ivanovna, and immediately opening her blotting-book,
she wrote to Alexey Alexandrovitch that she hoped to see
him at one o’clock at the levee.
‘I must talk with you of a grave and painful subject.
There we will arrange where to meet. Best of all at my
house, where I will order tea as you like it. Urgent. He
lays the cross, but He gives the strength to bear it,’ she
added, so as to give him some slight preparation. Countess
Lidia Ivanovna usually wrote some two or three letters a
day to Alexey Alexandrovitch. She enjoyed that form of
communication, which gave opportunity for a refinement
and air of mystery not afforded by their personal
interviews.

1117 of 1759