Page 151 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

touched me most...’ (and here Anna guessed what would
touch Dolly most) ‘he’s tortured by two things: that he’s
ashamed for the children’s sake, and that, loving you—yes,
yes, loving you beyond everything on earth,’ she hurriedly

interrupted Dolly, who would have answered— ‘he has
hurt you, pierced you to the heart. ‘No, no, she cannot
forgive me,’ he keeps saying.’
Dolly looked dreamily away beyond her sister-in-law as
she listened to her words.
‘Yes, I can see that his position is awful; it’s worse for
the guilty than the innocent,’ she said, ‘if he feels that all
the misery comes from his fault. But how am I to forgive
him, how am I to be his wife again after her? For me to
live with him now would be torture, just because I love
my past love for him..’
And sobs cut short her words. But as though of set
design, each time she was softened she began to speak
again of what exasperated her.
‘She’s young, you see, she’s pretty,’ she went on. ‘Do
you know, Anna, my youth and my beauty are gone,
taken by whom? By him and his children. I have worked
for him, and all I had has gone in his service, and now of
course any fresh, vulgar creature has more charm for him.

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