Page 1157 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

solitude. She could not and would not share it with
Vronsky. She knew that to him, although he was the
primary cause of her distress, the question of her seeing
her son would seem a matter of very little consequence.

She knew that he would never be capable of
understanding all the depth of her suffering, that for his
cool tone at any allusion to it she would begin to hate
him. And she dreaded that more than anything in the
world, and so she hid from him everything that related to
her son. Spending the whole day at home she considered
ways of seeing her son, and had reached a decision to
write to her husband. She was just composing this letter
when she was handed the letter from Lidia Ivanovna. The
countess’s silence had subdued and depressed her, but the
letter, all that she read between the lines in it, so
exasperated her, this malice was so revolting beside her
passionate, legitimate tenderness for her son, that she
turned against other people and left off blaming herself.
‘This coldness—this pretense of feeling!’ she said to
herself. ‘They must needs insult me and torture the child,
and I am to submit to it! Not on any consideration! She is
worse than I am. I don’t lie, anyway.’ And she decided on
the spot that next day, Seryozha’s birthday, she would go
straight to her husband’s house, bribe or deceive the

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