Page 1590 - ANNA KARENINA

Anna Karenina

The Frenchman was asleep, or pretending to be asleep,
with his head on the back of his chair, and his moist hand,
as it lay on his knee, made faint movements, as though
trying to catch something. Alexey Alexandrovitch got up,

tried to move carefully, but stumbled against the table,
went up and laid his hand in the Frenchman’s hand.
Stepan Arkadyevitch got up too, and opening his eyes
wide, trying to wake himself up if he were asleep, he
looked first at one and then at the other. It was all real.
Stepan Arkadyevitch felt that his head was getting worse
and worse.
‘Que la personne qui est arrivee la derniere, celle qui
demande, qu’elle sorte! Qu’elle sorte!’ articulated the
Frenchman, without opening his eyes.
‘Vous m’excuserez, mais vous voyez.... Revenez vers
dix heures, encore mieux demain.’
‘Qu’elle sorte!’ repeated the Frenchman impatiently.
‘C’est moi, n’est-ce pas?’ And receiving an answer in
the affirmative, Stepan Arkadyevitch, forgetting the favor
he had meant to ask of Lidia Ivanovna, and forgetting his
sister’s affairs, caring for nothing, but filled with the sole
desire to get away as soon as possible, went out on tiptoe
and ran out into the street as though from a plague-

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