Page 1385 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

myself to write to him.... Well, suppose I make the effort;
I do it. Either I receive a humiliating refusal or consent....
Well, I have received his consent, say...’ Anna was at that
moment at the furthest end of the room, and she stopped

there, doing something to the curtain at the window. ‘I
receive his consent, but my...my son? They won’t give
him up to me. He will grow up despising me, with his
father, whom I’ve abandoned. Do you see, I love...
equally, I think, but both more than myself—two
creatures, Seryozha and Alexey.’
She came out into the middle of the room and stood
facing Dolly, with her arms pressed tightly across her
chest. I her white dressing gown her figure seemed more
than usually grand and broad. She bent her head, and with
shining, wet eyes looked from under her brows at Dolly, a
thin little pitiful figure in her patched dressing jacket and
nightcap, shaking all over with emotion.
‘It is only those two creatures that I love, and one
excludes the other. I can’t have them together, and that’s
the only thing I want. And since I can’t have that, I don’t
care about the rest. I don’t care about anything, anything.
And it will end one way or another, and so I can’t, I don’t
like to talk of it. So don’t blame me, don’t judge me for
anything. You can’t with your pure heart understand all

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