Page 1168 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

loved him. He understood even what the nurse had
whispered. He had caught the words ‘always at nine
o’clock,’ and he knew that this was said of his father, and
that his father and mother could not meet. That he

understood, but one thing he could not understand—why
there should be a look of dread and shame in her face?...
She was not in fault, but she was afraid of him and
ashamed of something. He would have liked to put a
question that would have set at rest this doubt, but he did
not dare; he saw that she was miserable, and he felt for
her. Silently he pressed close to her and whispered, ‘Don’t
go yet. He won’t come just yet.’
The mother held him away from her to see what he
was thinking, what to say to him, and in his frightened
face she read not only that he was speaking of his father,
but, as it were, asking her what he ought to think about
his father.
‘Seryozha, my darling,’ she said, ‘love him; he’s better
and kinder than I am, and I have done him wrong. When
you grow up you will judge.’
‘There’s no one better than you!...’ he cried in despair
through his tears, and, clutching her by the shoulders, he
began squeezing her with all his force to him, his arms
trembling with the strain.

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