Page 1439 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

Chapter 32

Before Vronsky’s departure for the elections, Anna had
reflected that the scenes constantly repeated between them
each time he left home, might only make him cold to her
instead of attaching him to her, and resolved to do all she
could to control herself so as to bear the parting with
composure. But the cold, severe glance with which he had
looked at her when he came to tell her he was going had
wounded her, and before he had started her peace of mind
was destroyed.
In solitude afterwards, thinking over that glance which
had expressed his right to freedom, she came, as she always
did, to the same point—the sense of her own humiliation.
‘He has the right to go away when and where he chooses.
Not simply to go away, but to leave me. He has every
right, and I have none. But knowing that, he ought not to
do it. What has he done, though?... He looked at me with
a cold, severe expression. Of course that is something
indefinable, impalpable, but it has never been so before,
and that glance means a great deal,’ she thought. ‘That
glance shows the beginning of indifference.’

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