Page 1520 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

‘But what are you talking about?’ he said, horrified at
her expression of despair, and again bending over her, he
took her hand and kissed it. ‘What is it for? Do I seek
amusements outside our home? Don’t I avoid the society

of women?’
‘Well, yes! If that were all!’ she said.
‘Come, tell me what I ought to do to give you peace of
mind? I am ready to do anything to make you happy,’ he
said, touched by her expression of despair; ‘what wouldn’t
I do to save you from distress of any sort, as now, Anna!’
he said.
‘It’s nothing, nothing!’ she said. ‘I don’t know myself
whether it’s the solitary life, my nerves.... Come, don’t let
us talk of it. What about the race? You haven’t told me!’
she inquired, trying to conceal her triumph at the victory,
which had anyway been on her side.
He asked for supper, and began telling her about the
races; but in his tone, in his eyes, which became more and
more cold, she saw that he did not forgive her for her
victory, that the feeling of obstinacy with which she had
been struggling had asserted itself again in him. He was
colder to her than before, as though he were regretting his
surrender. And she, remembering the words that had
given her the victory, ‘how I feel on the brink of calamity,

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