Page 1384 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘But I think you ought to. You ought to do all you
can.’
‘But what can I do? Nothing. You tell me to marry
Alexey, and say I don’t think about it. I don’t think about

it!’ she repeated, and a flush rose into her face. She got up,
straightening her chest, and sighed heavily. With her light
step she began pacing up and down the room, stopping
now and then. ‘I don’t think of it? Not a day, not an hour
passes that I don’t think of it, and blame myself for
thinking of it...because thinking of that may drive me
mad. Drive me mad!’ she repeated. ‘When I think of it, I
can’t sleep without morphine. But never mind. Let us talk
quietly. They tell me, divorce. In the first place, he won’t
give me a divorce. He’s under the influence of Countess
Lidia Ivanovna now.’
Darya Alexandrovna, sitting erect on a chair, turned
her head, following Anna with a face of sympathetic
suffering.
‘You ought to make the attempt,’ she said softly.
‘Suppose I make the attempt. What does it mean?’ she
said, evidently giving utterance to a thought, a thousand
times thought over and learned by heart. ‘It means that I,
hating him, but still recognizing that I have wronged
him—and I consider him magnanimous—that I humiliate

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